Café Sebastienne: A Menu Evolution Years in the Making
The iconic Cafe Sebastienne is evolving into an art form of its own.
All photos by Grace Pritchett
A global pandemic has caused many restaurants in Kansas City to pivot to a socially-distanced model, and you shouldn’t be surprised to find Café Sebastienne in that group. Take-out friendly meals, reduced prices, and an overall reinvigorating excitement about the menu is what you’ll find in this new phase. Read on to hear about this amazing menu from Chef Rick Mullins and wonder to yourself why you haven’t ordered from Café Sebastienne yet.
With almost 3 years at Cafe Sebastienne under your belt - how has your approach to menu development changed?
The evolution of the menu at the cafe has been a strange journey that now seems to be headed in a direction that is more reflective of our approach. When a chef begins their tenure at a restaurant that has a legacy that predates them, it can be a bit intimidating. The part about walking in the footsteps of your predecessors is not the intimidating part to me, at all, but retaining the guest base created by your predecessors can be quite difficult. As can building a new guest base.
So, while the rest of the menu was evolving and we were trying to find our footing, we were hanging on to some old dishes and menu structures that seemed a bit dated. We were ready to move on, collectively, and have begun the process by letting go of the old approach and doing things the way we know, with the morals we embrace.
Beet Tostada. beet, black bean purée, spicy greens,
herbs, radish, crema dressing.
What’s it been like operating in a pandemic? What challenges have you faced?
Operating in a pandemic is a trip. The thing is that not one restaurant has the same story. Everyone has handled it their own way, for better or worse. There is not a playbook on how to run a ridiculously small margined endeavor, like a restaurant, during a pandemic. If anything, the pandemic has taught me that life can be dangerously unpredictable. Learning how to creatively navigate these challenges is key.
The most challenging part is not being able to operate fully staffed. More than the difficulty of preparing for service without a staff is not hearing the normal hustle and bustle of a fully staffed restaurant. I miss the day to day chats, laughs, and comradery of a full staff. This isn’t to say our small, core staff isn’t amazing– I just can’t wait to absorb the sounds and energy of a fully staffed kitchen.
House Bloody Mary. vodka, tomato, house pickles.
The pandemic has pushed us all to spend more time in our homes and in our kitchens - what have you been cooking the most while at home?
We were off from mid-March until mid-late October. So we had a bit more time in between being open to metabolize the seasons changing and really get into what was best when. I made it to one farmers market or another every week for the majority of my time off. This time allowed me to cultivate new friendships with farmers, nurture others, forage regularly, experience the best wild and not wild ingredients that grow in the region, and even fall in love with the most simple ingredients. When quarantine started I was fresh off, like a couple of weeks off, an amazing experience in Mexico so I naturally was playing with a lot of Mexican flavors. I wasn’t really cooking any one thing or any specific dishes but being influenced by techniques and ingredients. Cooked a good amount of cornbread. It ranks high on my things to consume regularly list.
Short Rib Grilled Cheese. marble rye, havarti, caramelized onion, grilled pickled jalapeno, dill yogurt sauce, sour cream & onion chips.
Tell me about this new menu refresh - what excites you the most about it?
The menu “refresh” will look a lot more like what it should for a contemporary art museum. We have dropped prices to create a more accessible experience in the cafe. Beautiful, delicious food and art should be for everyone. The menu now is geared towards a to-go model until day to day life is a bit safer for everyone. Once we can operate with less covid considerations the food will become more interactive for guests, sharable, and more of an experience. We are already beginning the process of the menu being inspired by the main exhibits. We let the art and the artist influence our menus. Whether that be being directly inspired by the colors of a piece, or by the ingredients and techniques of the artist's cultural background.
PB&J French toast with concord grape jam and peanut butter ice cream.
What are some of your favorite dishes on the new menu?
Uh, I am pretty amped on all of our food, right now. We have been doing a PB&J French toast with Prairie Birthday Farm Concord grape jam and peanut butter ice cream. I dream of it. The beet tostada is pretty great. We dress the beets with a crema we made and added some of Crum’s smoked jalapeño. It's earthy, sweet, funky, smoky. The cornbread service is also really good. Right now we are making cornbread with Hopi blue cornmeal. It is beautiful and earthy. It comes with pickled grilled jalapeño, pickled green strawberry and roasted garlic, smoked butter, and hot sauce. We are pretty jazzed on our pawpaw and aji sugar rush hot sauce.
Cara Cara Orange Margarita. tequila, mezcal, cara cara orange, lime.
I've seen you get really inspired to bring in certain new ingredients in previous menus so what ingredients or dish components have you been excited to use in this new menu?
Right now we are pretty hyped on Crum’s Heirlooms corn. We have a bunch of dried corn in our walk-in that gets used in a multitude of ways. It is a good product to be versatile with. We have been cooking short ribs from Salt Creek Farm that are aged for 35 days in a variety of dishes. They are spectacular wherever they end up. When we closed in March we were finishing up using all of our squash and sweet potatoes. When we reopened we pretty much cruised right into squash and sweet potato season. We are getting really antsy for spring. By the end of winter, I am ready for some fresh, colorful food.
What else can we look forward to for Cafe Sebastienne in 2021?
We are looking to make the cafe a more inviting, warm place that will encourage community. We want people to congregate there over food, coffee, cocktails, or whatever they may be looking for. We want everyone who visits the museum to visit the cafe or vice versa.
