When Brooke Silvey, bar manager at Tannin Wine Bar and Kitchen, realized over the weekend that a major winter storm was approaching Kansas City, she knew she would have to make the best use of supplies she had on hand if she wanted to keep the restaurant open.
The snowstorm dumped as much as a foot of snow in some places and froze traffic across the metro, making a commute to work impossible for many people. So, plenty of restaurants closed on Sunday and Monday, and most diners stayed home.
Thanks to Silvey’s quick thinking, Tannin, a Crossroads neighborhood meeting place for the past 14 years, began offering a special snow day menu — and asked customers to add something to the pot.
“So if our kitchen staff wasn't able to come in,” she said, “then we would still have something that we would be able to serve.”
Though a couple of Silvey’s friends stepped in to help, she knew she couldn’t offer full dinner service. Instead, the three-person crew improvised.
“None of us have ever worked directly in the kitchen, but we're all pretty good in the kitchen, so we decided that we would make a big thing of soup,” she told KCUR on Tuesday.
But, unsure of how many noodles they even had in the kitchen, she decided on the fly that customers could bring their own.
“With our chef's permission, of course,” Silvey added.
On Monday, she and the skeleton crew invited customers who braved the elements to bring their own noodles for a $10 chicken ramen special. Around 30 regulars took them up on the deal, Silvey said, bringing wheat, gluten-free and rice noodles.
“We decided to go kind of with a broth-based ramen soup, you know, something that would be hearty but also comforting,” she said.
The heady broth was made on Sunday with bacon, ginger, and chili paste — whipped up by Silvey’s friend Darrell Loo, who doesn’t work at the restaurant but was eager to help out.
“Darrell took the lead on it and did a fantastic job,” Silvey said.
Silvey also debuted a couple special drinks to mark the occasion: a Tiki-style “Belizian Snowstorm” and “A Hot Little Rummer Boy.”
After the regular kitchen staff was able to dig out and make it into the restaurant, they took over with the restaurant’s regular offerings.
The Crossroads restaurant offers an extensive wine list and a full kitchen, and is popular with a lot of service industry people — one more reason Silvey wanted to try and offer a meal to fill the gap.
“It's a great place for people who are passionate about wine or people who want to learn about wine,” Silvey said. “But we also have a big community of people from the neighborhood, who we see on a regular basis.”
Silvey said the Hampton Inn located just behind the restaurant offered Tannin staff rooms at a discounted rate over the weekend, meaning she didn’t have to deal with treacherous road conditions to get to work. She said without that support, Tannin Wine Bar would have had to close.
“It made the snow days a lot of fun for us,” she said. “It's also nice we can provide something back to those in the neighborhood and give them something to come in and enjoy.”
The special continues the rest of the week, Silvey said — or until the soup runs out.
