Options for the day after Thanksgiving tend to be limited, assuming you’re not interested in hurling yourself into the shopping fray. When we spend the holiday in Kansas City we almost always do the same thing on Friday – go to an art museum. The Nelson-Atkins is awesome, of course, but it’s a lot of museum to get hit with at once. I prefer the Kemper Modern Art Museum, which is small, manageable – and free!

We spent the morning looking through the museum, the main exhibit being some rather odd works from East Germany, and I got to visit my favorite painting in the collection. We had lunch in the museum’s restaurant, which is called Cafe Sebastienne. It’s really pretty good, and a nice setting, too – most of the tables are in an open, glass-ceilinged courtyard so it’s very bright and airy.

J ordered the Arctic char with cauliflower puree, chard and a maple-bourbon sauce. He doesn’t usually go for fish in restaurants, but we were able to buy char at our local fish counter a few months ago and were very taken by it. This seemed nice, the fish was a little overcooked by my standards but the flavors were interesting.

I got a plate with a couple of Merguez sausages with lots of red peppers on a bed of couscous, and a heaping side of cooked spinach. The sausage was very dense and a bit gristly, but the overall effect was tasty and it got lots of vegetables in me (something I felt in need of at this point in the trip).

My in-laws got a pizza (excellent, I ate a piece) and a plate of linguine. J and I were rather thrilled to see that the wine list had a bottle of Lot 20 red blend from Bookwalter Winery, one of our favorite stops in the Tri-Cities area. It suited the lunch perfectly.

Afterwards, fortified, we headed for the gift shop!