Disregard my previous post.
I finally put the pieces together.

Is there an example somewhere in this quagmire regarding getting the data item for a selected menu item?

If not, why not?
It's the most logical thing that you'd want to do for any data-driven menu.
All of the older posts I've seen about this indicate that it's not possible... has that changed?

WTF, "Javascript Ninjas"?

does this still not work?!!!!!

2 years since last Kendo Team view ... 

Also we need a way to 
- refresh part or totality of the menu .. 
- dynamically load submenu (evntualy each time it is accessed , source may change ...) 

It would help us greatly in a new Enterprise project we are working on. 

We need this bad!

Bump +1

This would be a great feature. IMO, it doesn't have to support all the DataSource features. It can be read-only, or when there is any change to the related model element it completely rebinds.

The menu control although very cool is a "real" pain to work with unless it is static data. Since it has a property called datasource why does it not behave like a bound datasource should behave. So casting my vote here also.

Thanks!  
Todd

Still nothing?

We always need dynamic menus when dealing with CMS's and application integrations. We've been stuck with the RadMenu...

I think what you are asking for is already there.  I am doing exactly that.

$(function () {
    var siteMenuDS,
    siteMenuServiceBaseUrl = "/SiteMenu",
    $siteMenu = $("#siteMenu"), siteMenu,
    $siteMenu2 = $("#siteMenu2"), siteMenu2;

    siteMenuDS = new kendo.data.DataSource({
        serverFiltering: false,
        transport: {
            read: function (options) {
                $.ajax({
                    url: siteMenuServiceBaseUrl + "/SiteMenu",
                    contentType: 'application/json; charset=utf-8',
                    dataType: "json",
                    type: "POST",
                    data: null,
                    success: function (result) {
                        options.success(result);
                        siteMenu = $siteMenu.kendoMenu({
                            dataSource: result,
                            orientation: "horizontal"
                        }).data("kendoMenu");


                        siteMenu2 = $siteMenu2.kendoMenu({
                            dataSource: result,
                            orientation: "vertical"
                        }).data("kendoMenu");

                    },
                    error: function (result) {
                        options.error(result); // Call the DataSource's "error" method with the results
                        notification.show({
                            title: "ERROR:",
                            message: result.statusText
                        }, "error");
                    }
                });
            }
        }
    });


    siteMenuDS.fetch();
});

This is sorely needed.  Our application needs to build the menu using an ajax call to a webApi service.  We need to be able to define a datasource that retrieves the json data for the menu like we do for other Kendo controls.

I have been able to do this in another way, but it is not very elegant.  Please....