Hearne: Bugs in Food Adds Eerie Air to Ted’s Montana Grill Closing

Know this about the eating establishment known as Ted’s Montana Grill...

The Ted Turner-branded chain has been a family fave since it opened in south Leawood a handful of years back. My kids loved playing with the complimentary Wikki Stix "twistable, stickable, buildable, playable one-of-a-kind creatables."

And against their better judgement, they also bought into the buffalo steaks, along with the grilled shrimp and deep dish apple crisp dessert.

The flip side of that schmooze?

Seldom were any of the three area Ted’s crowded – including on the all-important weekend nights.

And while the food was for the most part excellent (forget  the everyday-average buffalo burgers that seemed to garner so much attention with the online dining comments crowd), it was pricey.

How often did I dine at Ted’s?

Enough to have hit all three – and memorably so – in the last month or so of Ted’s operation here. With the family at the Legends the night the power went kaput and blacked out at the entire center in late September. At the Power& Light Ted on the night I broke up with the in-dee-an grrrl in early October. And at the Leawood Ted’s this past Saturday.

And what a way to go…

Saturday’s outing was a first and a last at Ted’s for my dining companion, a banker from Topeka.

"I was very excited about trying the bison tenderloin," she says. "And it seemed like we waited a long time for our food, so by the time it arrived I was ravenous."

That’s when the fun began.

"The plate looked wonderful," she says. "I had roasted asparagus, a baked sweet potato and the bison was perfectly seared. Then I picked up my utensils and looked at my plate and I blinked. I thought my eyes were deceiving me but I detected the slightest movement. Then I blinked again and saw five tiny movements on my plate. It was like tiny, rapid, dust-like movement – dust-like particles moving around in random patterns on my plate."

On closer inspection the awful truth unfolded.

"They were insect-looking mites circling my food on the plate. But it wasn’t until I reched out and killed one that I realized they were bugs."

Ted’s manager was quick to offer a complimentary replacement but the psychological damage was done.

Would the banker have returned to Ted’s were it not to have closed a day later?

"I don’t think so," she says. "The steak was good but it wasn’t that amazing of an atmosphere. I’m not saying it was bad – even with the bugs it wasn’t bad – it’s just creepy."