Most people go to Kansas City for the barbecue. I go for the fried rice. The kind I still dream about -- a far cry from the clumpy rice huddled with frozen vegetables that gets scooped into takeout cartons -- is a staple dish of chef Michael Corvino’s namesake restaurant, Corvino, on the Missouri side of downtown Kansas City.

The fried rice, which changes seasonally, currently calls for pineapple, but when I visited the main dining room during a temperate June evening, perfectly fluffy grains of rice were cut with sweet and crunchy bits of Asian pear, subtly sweet hunks of crab, and a funky house-made XO sauce that managed to hit all of my taste buds in unison.