The ambience was fine. The place looked as though it hadn¡¯t been remodeled in several decades. Photos of famous customers lined the wall; the waiting line snaked through a crowded dining room. It was noisy, and every hungry customer got a good look inside the huge oven while waiting to order. Definitely more interesting than your typical chain restaurant.

Unfortunately, the daily special was nothing special.

When I finally ate at the famous Arthur Bryant¡¯s restaurant in Kansas City, my pulled pork sandwich looked as though it wasn¡¯t just pulled, but thrown down and savagely beaten. The late Big Daddy wouldn¡¯t have felt threatened by the sauce, either.

It¡¯s such a disappointment when you look forward to something and then decide it was mostly hype.

Someday, if we¡¯re lucky, Central Iowa will have to face this problem. If Des Moines ever becomes a tourist destination ¨C you know, a place to go even if you don¡¯t have kids in the state wrestling or basketball tournaments ¨C we¡¯ll start feeling the pressure.

Imagine taking a visitor to see the Anderson Erickson Dairy cow and calf, and they¡¯re not impressed. Then what?

Up until now, our biggest advantage has been that first-time visitors don¡¯t expect much. When they realize you don¡¯t have to watch out for hogs and cattle as you walk around town, that¡¯s all it takes. ¡°Gee,¡± they think as they take off their respirator mask and rubber boots, ¡°this isn¡¯t so bad.¡±

But we¡¯re gradually getting more notice, so eventually people will show up with expectations. If something lets them down, that¡¯s what they¡¯ll remember. They¡¯ll go home saying, ¡°Aah, Des Moines isn¡¯t so great.¡±

Another example from Kansas City: We stopped by the jazz museum in a district that¡¯s obviously being groomed for big things. Now a music museum depends on one thing to make visitors happy: excellent headphones. Unfortunately, some of the headphones worked on only one channel, and quite a few didn¡¯t work at all.

And if they ever got the movie to play, it was after we gave up and left.

Charlie Parker deserves better treatment than that.

Of course, there¡¯s plenty of good stuff about Kansas City that an up-and-coming city like Des Moines should consider; let¡¯s go to the scorecard:

¡ñ Just walking around Country Club Plaza is a treat, even if you spend all of your time saying, ¡°I can¡¯t believe these prices.¡± If only we had a district with such distinctive design. But without the panhandlers.

¡ñ Thanks to an extremely friendly K.C. native, our shuttle bus to and from the ballgame almost felt like a family outing. Unexpected moments like that are always a vacation highlight; and the great thing is, by the time your new friends start getting on your nerves, the ride is over.

¡ñ The Steamboat Arabia exhibit is nicely done; we need more people around here like the guys who exhumed that stuff from under a farm field. People who are willing to cast common sense aside.

¡ñ Worlds of Fun is fun, but not that much above Adventureland. The lesson here is that roller coasters constructed of large, welded steel tubes are a major step forward. Then there was the Timberwolf, which looks more like some high school shop students got a good price on two-by-fours. My brain still hurts from that.

¡ñ Maybe the nicest surprise occurred at the Nelson-Atkins Art Museum. Though most people think they don¡¯t need any help staring at pictures, we latched on to an excellent tour guide. She¡¯s a Davenport native, possibly in her late 60s, and she was charming, informative and obviously loves the art.

Just the kind of person we might need around here some day. Might as well start looking now.