At this KC restaurant, a brunch dish from a far-off land makes me feel so at home

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I moved from Des Moines to Kansas City two weeks into the pandemic, in early April 2020, when the world seemed to fall apart and disappear.

So my now-husband and I were thrilled when Clay & Fire opened up in our West Side neighborhood that summer, bringing cuisine from foreign lands. We snagged a patio table almost immediately for Sunday morning brunch.

We marveled that we could eat somewhere besides our apartment. We watched beneath the canopy of the catalpa tree as Adam Jones, one of the owners, watered flower pots and chatted with diners.

That day I ordered what I still get almost every time I have brunch (only available on Sunday mornings) at the little restaurant at 815 W. 17th St.: chirbuli ($13).

And now that I’ve seen how it’s made back in the kitchen, I crave it even more.

The dish, from the country of Georgia, near Turkey, is a stew of sorts, made of onion, garlic, tomato, walnut, coriander, butter and basil, and topped with poached eggs. It tastes like a little bowl of comfort, made to be eaten next to a fire with a book, or on a crisp fall day, all cozy in a warm jacket. But as summer approaches, I realize it’s perfect year-round.

On a recent May day, the chef, Brent Gunnels, said the dish is the genesis of huevos rancheros, after Georgian immigrants brought chirbuli to Mexico in the 19th century.

As the tomatoes cooked down, Gunnels hand-mashed garlic and walnuts in a mortar and pestle, then added everything to a cast iron bowl that he pushed into the 1,000-degree wood-fire oven, where the flavors could marinate for a few minutes.

The rich, salty, tangy mashup is finished with poached eggs, spirals of fresh basil and billowy, crisp flatbread made to order.

“Bread is the lifeblood of this place,” Gunnels said before snagging a batch from beside the flames, adding that almost their whole menu is cooked with fire in some way.

It’s the oven that immediately won me over when I first stepped inside the restaurant. It smelled familiar and warm, like my grandparents’ eastern Iowa home. Gunnels said they hear that a lot.

He first walked into the yellow and red house-turned-restaurant 12 years ago, when it was Lil’s Cafe. He loved the comforting feel of the wood interior. When he and the owners took over the space, Gunnels said they leaned into the “grandma feel,” thrifting floral plates and pretty glasses.

But the heart of the place will always be the food.

The restaurant was envisioned as a collaboration between Jones, whose wife, Noori, is a native of Tehran, Iran, and Orcan Yigit, a Turkish chef who owns a number of restaurants in Ankara. When Yigit got stuck in Turkey because of the pandemic, Jones brought in Gunnels as the chef instead.

Gunnels has never visited the region of Turkey, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Georgia and Iran, but he pored over cookbooks and his stove in the early days of the restaurant, learning the science and heart behind the cuisine there. He recreated the dishes with a Kansas City twist — the smoked beef short rib kharcho is a nod to local barbecue culture, and the guajillo hummus a nod to the neighborhood’s Hispanic heritage.

Many evenings, families with roots in that region and the Middle East gather in the restaurant’s snug upstairs dining rooms. Many tell Gunnels he made a meal just like they used to have back home, an ocean away.

“The most magical thing is people from Iraq or Iran or Georgia or wherever say, ‘This is just like my mama used to make,’” Gunnels said. “That blows me away.”

While I felt stuck in those early months of the pandemic — unable to travel the world or even explore Kansas City — Gunnels brought a corner of the world, and Kansas City, to me through his menu filled with locally sourced ingredients and flavors.

On my recent visit, I dug into the chirbuli and swiped up their spread trio — hummus, guajillo hummus and shallot dip (the latter a substitute for the usual roasted eggplant spread). And I reminisced on all the good memories there.

It’s where we bring friends when they visit town. If we’re there for dinner instead of brunch, I love to watch their faces when the khachapuri ($19), a huge boat of Georgian cheesy bread, arrives at the table. It’s where my husband and I toasted the next chapter of our lives together as we celebrated our engagement last winter. It’s where we hope to dream up many more adventures.