Here is the review from Food & Flicks. I had a very different experience.

First, it’s a cool looking, modern-minimalist place. No clutter, just a place that you would expect to have in a metropolitan area like Denver or the Plaza even. So – kudos for that.

Staff was friendly and engaging.

Food:
I ordered the quiche…and they didn’t have it. I then ordered their salad with hummus. And they didn’t have that. So I’ll go with the Turkey Club and they didn’t have that.

I quote my conversation with the cashier at this point.

Me: Okay…so why don’t you tell me what you do have on this menu.

Guy: Pretty much anything you see on the menu.

Me: I’m 0 for 3 ordering off the menu. Help me out a bit.

Guy: We have a soup.

Me: Great, what is it?

Guy: It’s the Soup de Jour.

Me: LONG PAUSE. So you’re telling me that the soup of the day is the soup of the day?
(To be fair, he could have trying to be funny and it just didn’t work. I couldn’t really tell.)

The other guy finally tells me it is a Cheese Ale soup. I order it. My buddy (who invited me to the place) ordered a Cranberry Chicken Salad Sandwich. We both ordered the Ecuadorian coffee. It was the best thing of the whole experience. The coffee was outstanding…a bit expensive…but outstanding.

The soup was good but tiny. Very tiny. Think small coffee cup size. My friend said his sandwich tasted great as well. But…

Price:
There is no way around this – it’s expensive. 7 to 9 dollars for a salad or a sandwiches that are medium to small portion sizes, with no chips or side or drink is a bit much. It’s like tourist prices….but without the view or travel.

What made it all the more disappointing was just yards away stood my favorite place to eat – The Burger Stand – where I could have gotten a huge hamburger, whole side of fries and a drink for the same price as my cup of coffee and cup of soup.

Overall Experience:
It’s a nice place. It is a quiet, comfortable place to meet and talk over coffee.

But don’t go there hungry. While the food quality is outstanding, the portion sizes versus pricing is considerably out of kilter.

UPDATE: Just learned that today was the first day they were serving food. A ‘soft open’ I believe is what they call it in the Biz. That may explain not having the full menu available.

Toucan Express
1003 S.E. Quincy
Topeka, KS 66612
(785) 233-5900

Grabbed lunch with my good friend Gary Manford yesterday and we decided to try the Toucan Express – Brazilian Buffet. After 10 years of visiting Brazil, my family has a love for the Brazilian food and culture.

Let me get the most annoying thing about this place out of the way right now. Parking. I realize that really isn’t the Toucan Express’s fault but this location has seen something like 37 dinner restaurants come and go. I think the biggest reason is parking. There is nowhere to park and the 4 places you can park is going to cost you about a $1 an hour – in coins.

START OF MINI-RANT: I wonder if the city of Topeka really wants the downtown area to thrive or not. They seem to do everything in their power to make life difficult for the customer. It’s a shame because I can count 6 places that I think are superior places to eat but are absolutely ridiculous to get to because of parking and parking meters. END OF RANT.

I didn’t have any coins. So I walk in and ask Gary if he’s got any coins and he doesn’t. The waiter reaches in his pocket and pulls out 3 quarters and gives them to me. That has got to be the best service I’ve had in a long time. (And you can bet I rewarded him greatly with my tip after the meal.)

The decor is sparse. I wanted there to be this overwhelming sense of smells and sights that took me back to Brazil. The smells were there. The sights were not. Of course, they are still in their soft opening phase. If you aren’t familiar with what a soft opening is – see Oceans 13.

Toucan Express only serves lunch as of right now and every day is a different menu. Today being Thursday meant we got the Brazilian Roast Beef and Chicken Stroganoff. Of course, there were the usual rice, beans, yuka – potato like root from Brazil (very good), and their cornbread. Two kinds of cornbread – the regular and coconut. I’m not a fan of coconut but Gary is. I lost track of how many pieces he ate. I assume that means he thought it was very, very, good. Rice pudding was also served as a dessert.

The food was very good and hearty…and plenty of it. The beef skewers were outstanding. Thin pieces of beef wrapped and marinated — good night, it was good. I’m not really doing it justice. The cook came out and spent some time talking to us. She asked about our food and the conversation turned to her home in Rio de Janeiro.

Overall: Good place to eat. 10 bucks gets you all-you-can-eat buffet and a drink. Pretty reasonable.

Parking is a nightmare, I hope they can overcome that.

Future Plans: Chef said that the hope is to have a churrascaria on the weekend. That’s the swords full of meat for those of you wondering.

What got me interested was a rumor going around that they served fried chicken and waffles. Now that is southern soul food, right there. And don’t knock them until you’ve tried them.

MINOR RABBIT TRAIL: One of the biggest issues of living in the midwest and west is that these people out here don’t know really how to cook to fried chicken. So it’s risky ordering fried chicken. Most places out here have this crispy, golden skin (good) with a bone-dry meat underneath (horrific). OR the breading on the chicken is slimy, not crisp and golden. There are not to many things more disappointing than getting your stomach all set on some good fried chicken and having to eat that junk. And for the record — the best way to fry chicken is in a cast-iron skillet.

BACK TO LONDON’S: You could hear the live music spilling out onto the street. That Blues Band was in a groove…and it was good. Not Bealle Street good but good enough. The owner (Lisa Kirk) met us at the door, gave us a great big friendly welcome and off we went to experience the food.

THE GOOD:
$5 cover charge – more than reasonable. Great musician and good vibe in the room.

$10 Chicken & Waffle Special – you get two big pieces of chicken, a waffle, all the sweet tea you can drink and a dessert the size of a hubcap. The chicken was cooked about to perfection. Very good, very moist.

Dessert – there were 6 or 7 different choices, one of which was a lemon cake that probably weighed 4 lbs. One dessert is plenty big enough to share. Try the brownie/ice cream/cookie tower dessert as well.

Atmosphere – about halfway through the night, I noticed two distinct things. First, there was no alcohol and there was no smoking. Finding good live music on the weekend is a tricky proposition. Most of the time when you find great music, you have to fight the smoke-filled room the first part of the evening. I have ridiculous allergies so not having to sneeze, hack, or cough my way home was a nice treat. The second part of the evening is avoiding the intoxicated people whose lack of dancing ability is no longer an issue for them OR they want to tell you how wonderful of a person you are even though you just met. Again — nice benefit of the night at London’s. Good food. Good music. Good atmosphere.

Needs Some Work:

Sound/Volume – the band sounded great, the guitars and bass, drums and percussion were tight and clean. The vocals were muddy in the mix and it was just a bit to loud for that size room. Especially for jazz and blues. A softer touch on the mix with a bit more emphasis on the vocals will do wonders for an already great experience.

Service – people were friendly but wait staff was not outstanding. It was average. Plus, the cups they served their beverages in were extremely small. So constant refills were needed but wait staff could seldom keep up with the demand. (They should have left a pitcher at the tables…another idea.) On the positive side, we did not have to wait long at all for our food.

Overall – great experience and will return. Highly recommend for our Topeka friends looking for a good night on the town. Check website for schedule.

Here’s why. They broke in the best NCAA basketball game in years to tell us about rain and a tornado 150 miles away….for an HOUR!!!!!

Look – I get it. Tornado coming, pop on tell the community tornado is coming, then pop off. Don’t stand in front of a green screen with circa 1980 graphics telling in all the cool cloud formations and what they mean for the next 55 minutes. We don’t care. If we are in the tornado’s path – we’re not listening anyway, we’re hiding in the basement.

So either way – it makes no sense to crash into programming for an hour. None. Throw up the picture in picture screen, do the annoying non-HD scroll announcement on the bottom since your station is too cheap to have HD – even though this is a capital city. Do anything except what you did.

And don’t stand on the TV and justify WHY you are not going back to the game and giving me score updates. All that does it make me angrier. Because it means YOU are watching the game while I have to watch YOU.

This is why Google is not coming to Topeka.

There — I feel better.

There is something that happens to the human spirit when it observes good art. I’m not sure if it’s completely fair to call it worship but I don’t think that’s all that far off either. So I’ve had this desire to include art any time it’s possible in the context of worship.

Back to my crazy idea – I knew we were going to do this series on ORIGINS and I wanted to have dramatic art pieces that went along with each of the stories. But who can paint 12 different paintings, 6 different themes with the first one just a few weeks away? That’s when I saw the painting at WRHS. So I asked around to see who painted it – turns out I knew him and his mom worked at the school.

That’s when I first heard about Circle of Friends. I walked into the mom’s office and there was even more artwork. Most of it done by disabled kids. Circle of Friends paired disabled kids with ‘abled’ kids for the purpose of creating a ‘normal’ high school experience. Lunch buddies, class buddies, peer tutors and art are just some of the ways this club is bringing healing to these students.

I asked about the possibility of these kids in this club painting the stories of Genesis – no rules or direction other than read the story first. What could they come up with? Would they even be interested in doing something like this?

The answer was an overwhelming yes. All of a sudden this whole project kind of generated a life of its own. Hobby Lobby sold us the canvases at an incredible discount. The idea of selling of them to benefit Circle of Friends turned into an auction, turned into an auction on the Topeka’s First Friday Night Artwalk February 5. Warehouse 414 stepped up and said they’d sponsor it for us.

All of this is great and there is no telling how all this will play out but I’m struck by a couple of observations.

I’m hearing from some of the students that are painting that this is the first time they’ve ever read these stories in Genesis. For some, it’s the first time they’ve ever read a Bible at all.

When the pieces are revealed, there has been this pause…this holy silence of wonder. Then applause. I think the art for some is ministering to a place in their soul they didn’t know existed. And they’re liking it.

It’s another avenue to connect and serve the community around us. With budget cuts, the arts are going to suffer the most. And when the arts are left out of a kids education, we all suffer from it in the long. I think beauty and the appreciation of beauty is part of what makes humanity very different from every other being alive. When we lose this, we lose a part of what it means to be human.

What an opportunity for us..to provide a context for artists to experiment with these stories, our stories. A chance for some to hear God’s story for the first time. A chance for us to see God’s story through a different lens.

If you haven’t seen these paintings, you need to come by and spend some time in our worship center. For those who are out of town…I’ll try to upload some pictures later.