If Kansas City is a town that can appreciate the joy of eating barbecue inside of a gas station, then surely, we can celebrate the desire to dine on dumplings and other Chinese dishes inside an Asian furniture store.
Rakar Dumpling House opened last spring inside a remodeled Winstead’s located on 135th Street in Leawood, Kansas. Gone are the pastel-colored tiles, drive-through window, and pink and green neon. They’ve been replaced with a modern stone façade and clean white exterior with a “Now Open” banner beckoning people to stop in and see what’s cooking.
Offering diners this creative combination is Jim Zhang, who imports and sells Asian furniture, and Catherine Kot, who grew up in the restaurant business. Her family opened the Dragon Inn in downtown Overland Park, Kansas, almost 50 years ago. The two decided to bring their passions together in the same spot, but walking into the space the restaurant dominates, while a small corner is dedicated to antique and new Asian furniture and artifacts.
What the furniture store may lack in size and selection, it clearly adds to the atmosphere of the restaurant itself, and the result is an elegant, spacious dining room with seating for 60. Diners can choose to sit at either long, shared tables or smaller two and four tops scattered throughout the room. A large fountain and fireplace tucked into one corner gives an Asian farmhouse vibe to the space. The result is eclectic and cozy.
As stylishly rustic as the décor may seem, technology has its place here. Servers will greet you with a quick demonstration on how to use the touchscreens to place and pay for your order using Toast’s online ordering system. You can also access the system from home on the website to place a carry-out or delivery order.
After paying, help yourself to water before heading to a stand stacked with white plastic plates in two sizes, silverware, chopsticks, and small sauce bowls to fill with condiments offered in jars or squeeze bottles. Available seasonings include hot mustard, a sweet-and-sour sauce, a dumpling sauce, the earthy funk and umami of Chinkiang black vinegar, and Rakar’s house-made sidekick sauce, a fiery combination of chopped fresh red chilies with the seeds, fried shallots, and garlic that will “kick” any dish.
Once seated, the food arrived in a fast and furious pace, and although we had ordered many things, we had all our food and pot of steaming Mandarin orange pu-erh tea sitting in front of us in about 15 minutes.
We approached dinner as the Chinese do, by sharing everything, which gave the experience a sort of dim sum quality. But if you’re someone who requires your own starter, entrée, sides, and dessert, you certainly can approach your meal that way.
The menu starts, and so should you, with a smattering of dumplings, including pork, beef, chicken, fish, lamb, shrimp, or vegetable. You can choose to have your dumplings steamed or pan-fried—we ordered the pork dumplings steamed and the lamb pan-fried. Both were clearly made by hand, with a rough crimp that kept the filling firmly inside the dough. Dumplings come eight to an order and are bite-sized, with a fine chew and just the right amount of filling.
The steamed pork dumplings were slick and juicy, bursting in the mouth with just a touch of star anise punching up the mild-flavored meatball. The pan-fried lamb dumplings were a curiosity. I had never seen lamb dumplings on a menu before, but I understand they’re quite common in northern China where Kot’s family is from. They were fragrant and tender, filled with cubed lamb dotted with green onion. The base of the dumpling had a nice, caramelized crust from the pan, which tasted even better dipped in the heady black vinegar.
Next, we tried the luo song tang soup, a popular northern Chinese soup that translated means Russian soup, or Chinese borscht, because it originated in a Chinese city located not far from the Russian border. Tomatoes substitute for the beets typically found in borscht. At Rakar, the tomato broth was slightly sweet and reminiscent of ketchup, with chopped cabbage, carrots, onions, macaroni, and sliced beef floating in the broth. A quick hit of sidekick sauce brought the bowl more in balance.
An order of egg rolls seemed like a basic guilty pleasure, but one bite and it was evident that they were also handmade. Crispy on the outside with perfectly golden-brown bubbled skin hot from the fryer and soft pillowy dough on the inside filled with tender cabbage, carrots, and green onions, they were the perfect bite, especially when greedily dunked in both the hot mustard and the delicious house-made sweet-and-sour sauce.
That was followed by slices of glazed char siu, Cantonese-style barbecue pork, that was supposed to be brushed with honey glaze, although mine was missing from my plate, which made the pork taste quite dry. A little more sweet-and-sour sauce rescued the dish. The pork was served with steamed broccoli and brown rice cooked with a smattering of Chinese whole spices, giving it a soft, enticing aroma and flavor.
The chicken lo mein was a pleasant surprise, a healthy portion that made for a colorful and flavorful plate. Flat wheat noodles are boiled, then stir-fried with chopped chicken thighs, fresh bean sprouts, cabbage, carrots, scallions, and onions before being finished with soy sauce and sesame oil that made them deliciously slick when devoured with a satisfied slurp.
For dessert, we finished our pot of tea with fried steamed buns that came five to a plate and could be dipped into a small bowl of sweetened condensed milk. The buns were sweet enough on their own, slightly crunchy on the outside from being fried, with a soft puffy center from being steamed, evocative of a delicious yeasty doughnut.
I enjoyed the mix of furniture and food on offer at Rakar Dumpling House, but it’s the namesake dumplings that will keep people coming back.