Food & Drink >>

• Best Sauce
  Arthur Bryant's
  The tang is the thang. Arthur Bryant's sauce has a rich tanginess that literally invades meat and releases its innermost succulence. It's an adult taste, light on the sugar, heavy on the celery salt, which every real barbecue enthusiast knows is the true spice of life. More >>
• Best Coffee House
  45th Street Coffee Shop
  Going to the 45th Street Coffeehouse is like stepping into a cozy living room. Groups of big, overstuffed chairs are clustered around coffee tables, and fluffy, leopard-print pillows sit on a wide seat in front of a picture window. The smell of cinnamon and spice fills the air from a burning... More >>
• Best Soul Food
  The Peach Tree Buffet
  The term "soul food" supposedly originated in the 1960s, but the cooking style is classic African-American that is centuries old. At the gracious Peach Tree Buffet, which is done up in cool shades of melon, peach and ivy, diners can pile white china plates with creamy macaroni and cheese, golden... More >>
• Best Place to Kiss a Diet Goodbye
  The Range Steakhouse
  You need to be hungry -- really hungry -- to get all the bang for your buck at this attractive casino steak house. Even before diners wander over to the lavish salad bar, they've been treated to a big plate of red corn chips and a dish of smoky-flavored roasted poblano tapenade. Then comes the... More >>
• Best Snooty Restaurant
  The American Restaurant
  As fans of Henry James know, snobbery can be appealing. No local restaurant has more snob appeal than The American. It's one of the most beautiful dining rooms in the city, with the old-fashioned refined style of service one rarely finds in restaurants anymore. But there's a haughty edge to this... More >>
• Best Restaurant You Never Knew Existed
  Pho Vung Tau
  Pho Vung Tau is a tiny Vietnamese restaurant in the corner space of a huge World War I-era building across from the Apple Market and the Askew Inn on Independence Avenue. But stepping through the front door causes culture shock. Think Saigon, 1969. Shiny blue linoleum floors, Formica-topped... More >>
• Best Restaurant View
  Piropos Restaurant
  The first Argentinian steak house in Kansas City has a world-class view. Located in a new building on a hill, Piropos has windows on almost every side, offering a panoramic view of quaint downtown Parkville, the Missouri River, the Park University spire and, in the distance, the sparkling lights... More >>
• Best Decadent Dessert
  Snicker Bar Ice Cream Pie
  Chappell's kitchen staff can barely keep up with the demand for giant slabs of Snicker Bar Ice Cream Pie, made with a crust of crushed Oreo cookies topped by ice cream blended with chopped-up Snickers candy bars. "Then we pour hot fudge over the whole thing," says Chappell, "and everyone just... More >>
• Best Waitress
  Audrey Anderson
  You don't meet many career waitresses anymore, but Audrey Anderson has been hauling out plates for so long that she's now waiting on the children of the children of her first customers. She's best known for her long tenure at the old Rodeway Inn in Overland Park, where her snappy service and... More >>
• Best-Looking Waitresses
  Raoul's Velvet Room
  Let's just say, hypothetically, that HBO was going to film a new TV series about sexy young waitresses struggling to find love, respect and decent tips in a Midwestern suburb. The show would need characters who were attractive, smart, funny and lovable. That would be the staff at Raoul's Velvet... More >>
• Best Place to Eat After Midnight
  Chubby's
  When the LaBruzzo family pulled its second Chubby's restaurant out of the Barclay building, it took a couple of years to get the new location -- a free-standing box with a spacious parking lot -- open and running. But the new place is a year old and has really caught on: It's busy day and... More >>
• Best Guaranteed Place to be Seen by Someone You Know While Hungover on Sunday Mornings
  First Watch
  Located within easy distance of the Plaza, Westport, Downtown and KCK, the First Watch in Westport is like an open petri dish -- full of different cultures mixing together. Since it draws a diverse crowd, from urban hipsters to medical students to Johnson County-ites, the odds are greater that... More >>
• Best Bagel (1 Comment)
  New York Bakery and Delicatessen
  The New York Bakery and Delicatessen, which has been dishing out unlikely treats such as tongue sandwiches since 1905, is the only place in Kansas City to get an unassimilated bagel. The bagels here are soft and eggy, like challah bread with a hole in the middle. They're not starchy or dense,... More >>
• Best Cheap Breakfast
  Ruby's Dagwoods Café
  You can still get a plate of good flaky biscuits smothered in creamy sausage gravy for less than three bucks at this classic joint in Rosedale, which has outlasted lots of fancier restaurants over the years. In fact, Ruby's Dagwoods Café has outlasted a lot of Rosedale. Above the little... More >>
• Best Brunch
  Figlio's
  Other Sunday brunches in the city are more lavish, but none is as consistently good as the one at Figlio's, which is still a bargain at $14.95. Make a run through the salad choices first, loading a plate with a neatly dressed Caesar or a tossed salad and fresh fruits and cheeses. Then say... More >>
• Best Greasy Spoon
  The Heriford Grill
  The Heriford Grill has been a 24-hour institution on Kansas City's East Side for a half century. This free-standing brick diner, with its worn orange counter, perpetually hot grill and giant menu posted as a sign on the back wall, has changed little since the Truman administration. Then,... More >>
• Best Lunch Buffet
  Great India
  A wise culinary sage once said, "Phooey on chop suey, hooray for chicken Bombay!" While most lunch buffets overflow with greasy food to be slopped indistinguishably onto harried lunchers' plates, the basins at Great India are filled with the same high-quality dishes as the menu. The aromatic... More >>
• Best Restaurant to Spot a Celebrity
  Café Sebastienne
  Lunch hours become potential name-dropping opportunities at the stylish Café Sebastienne, where chef Jennifer Maloney's artistic menu frequently mirrors the creativity on display in the adjacent galleries. Local artists and writers dine there frequently, but it's also the ne plus ultra... More >>
• Best Kid-Friendly (But Not Kid-Focused) Joint
  Buca di Beppo
  The new Plaza location for this Minneapolis-based chain is underground, with every inch of wall space crammed with photos, paintings, old record albums and geegaws like ceramic kittens, plaster Popes and porcelain puppies. Kids love the wild energy, the big, comfy booths, the chummy service and... More >>
• Best Surprisingly Vegetarian-Friendly Restaurant
  La Parilla
  Travelers who have visited Latin America know that the term parilla -- or grill -- is synonymous with open-pit barbecues in smoky hole-in-the-wall restaurants where tango music plays. Usually, nearly whole animals (everything but the head) are stretched across the pit crucifixion-style and... More >>
• Best Hotel Bar
  Skies
  Sadly, the hotel bars in Kansas City aren't quite the hip, trendy destination spots that they are in other cities, which attract guests and locals alike. The chances of meeting a hot, nomadic business traveler with a corporate charge card while being within stumbling distance of a bed is... More >>
• Best Place to Take a Strict Vegan
  Thai Place
  For a vegan in Cowtown, sometimes getting a cow-free meal is a daunting task. If chefs can't put beef in a meal, they'll surely try to stick in some cheese or a bit of cream. So hungry vegans will be happy to know that it's easy to get the meal without the "moo" at Thai Place. At this... More >>
• Best Bar in Which to Make Out with a Total Stranger
  XO
  Any time there's a lethal mix of alcohol, sofas, a seemingly attractive crowd (it's dark in there, after all), pulsating laser lights and a thudding techno beat -- as there is at XO -- hooking up is bound to happen. Making out with a total stranger is easily accomplished at XO, thanks to a... More >>
• Best Tapas
  La Bodega
  The Spanish word tapa means "lid" or "cover." But tapas are also light appetizers or snacks eaten in Spain just after siesta to tide the stomach over until supper at 9 or 10 p.m. It is said that the concept of the tapa was born more than a century ago in the region of Andalucia, where innkeepers... More >>
• Best Place to Meet Republican Guys
  Raoul's Velvet Room
  Some guys have girls at "hello." And some guys have them with, "Remember the second presidential debate? When Bush said he was against same-sex marriages? Well, I thought that was cool." Located in a strip mall off 119th Street in Johnson County, Raoul's Velvet Room, with its chi-chi atmosphere,... More >>
• Best Girlie Drinks
  The Cheesecake Factory
  In a classic Kids in the Hall sketch, a corporate office worker introduces his colleague, a former nondrinker, to the pleasures of umbrella-decorated alcoholic refreshment. Soon, the new convert becomes a girl-drink drunk, sneaking into the supply closet to noisily blend his fruity concoctions.... More >>
• Best Deep-Fried Appetizer
  Fried Pickles at Tomfooleries
  Onion ring lovers beware: Just one bite of the fried pickles at Tomfooleries will make your beloved discs seem bland. This appetizer has more zing than a space-age Frisbee. They're coated with a thick crust, and inside is a chunk of pickle cooked to ultra-tanginess. The folks at Tomfooleries... More >>
• Best Fried Chicken
  Stroud's
  There's a reason customers continue to wait for a table -- sometimes as long as an hour -- for a platter of the legendary Stroud's pan-fried chicken. Just under that tongue-searing, crackling, golden crust is the juiciest, most flavorful bird in the city. The original Stroud's still looks like... More >>
• Best Name for a Mexican Restaurant
  La Cocina del Puerco
  The literal translation of La Cocina del Puerco is "kitchen of the pig." How apropos, considering that the sopping-good menu there can make a pig out of anyone. Especially when it comes to actually eating a pig -- i.e. Cocina's scrumptious carnitas. More >>
• Best Barbecue
  Lil' Jake's Eat It and Beat It
  Lil' Jake's Eat It and Beat It could easily take top prize in several Best of Kansas City categories. The restaurant's Southern-style ribs have been known to make mouths water like a Rain Bird sprinkler. Its charbroiled chicken is juicier than the plot of a pulp-fiction novel. Best of the best,... More >>
• Best Burnt Ends
  LC's Bar-B-Q
  When tourists come to Kansas City, they usually order up a slab of ribs. They're bound to enjoy themselves, but they're mistaken if they think they're getting a true taste of the local culture. For that, they need burnt ends, the true working-class local fave. First, burnt ends are usually the... More >>
• Best Steak
  The Capital Grille
  We may have hell to pay from Kansas City's independent steak houses for naming the Capital Grille as the home of this year's best steak, but the Atlanta-based chain serves one helluva Kansas City strip. Not since Gypsy Rose Lee did one of her earliest gigs at the Folly Theatre has a local strip... More >>
• Best Food that Tastes Just Like Mom's
  Stephenson's Old Apple Farm Restaurant
  Once American flags start waving all over town, it's easy to forget all the hipster restaurants and their haute-couture cuisine. Patriotism means dinners that start with a relish tray! At Stephenson's, autographed photos of Ginger Rogers, Ruth Warrick, Frank Gifford and Paul Harvey are framed in... More >>
• Best Dinner Under $5
  Harold's Drive Inn
  Harold's is one of the city's last 1950s-style "drive-ins," where customers pull into a parking lot, go inside and order at the counter, then take their food someplace else to eat. The little white building with the red trim has been a fixture in downtown Kansas City since 1958, although Harold... More >>
• Best Unsung Chef
  Ali Shiraz, Shiraz Restaurant
  Chefs are mostly unappreciated: trapped in hot kitchens for most of their careers, putting in too many hours, always juggling creativity with cost. But if, as nineteenth-century French writer Grimod de la Reyniere believed, a kitchen "is a country in which there are always discoveries to be... More >>
• Best New Restaurant
  Aixois
  Although the trendy Aixois, owned by chef Emmanuel Langlade and his wife, Megan Sparks, has only been open since August 1, it's already become the busiest -- and most talked-about -- new restaurant in town. Even perpetually cranky curmudgeons have fallen for the place. ("It's mostly wonderful,... More >>
• Best Place to Feel Euro
  Patio of Harry's Bar and Tables
  The patio at Harry's Bar and Tables is one of the classiest in town. With its overhanging trees and British phone booth, it's like being in a European sidewalk cafe. It's a prime location for people-watching in Westport, but if that gets boring, a huge collection of magazines is displayed along... More >>
• Best Reason to Go to Kelly's at Night
  $1 Jell-O shots
  On weekend nights, two words sum up the crowd waiting to get into Kelly's: tube tops. Well known as a meat market, Kelly's morphs into a sea of one-shouldered tops, backless halters and gold chain/shell necklace-wearing, plaid-shirted guys. One good reason to push your way through this crowd,... More >>
• Best Cinnamon Roll
  New York Bakery and Delicatessen
  When one of the flour-caked veterans who oversaw Kansas City's oldest kosher bakery left a few years ago, he took the recipe for baked cinnamon rolls with him. But New York Bakery and Delicatessen owners Jim and Barbara Holzmark didn't turn sour over losing that particular sweet roll. Their... More >>
• Best Expensive Breakfast
  Platters
  For lunch and dinner, the lower-level dining room of the newly restored Phillips Hotel offers a one-price "buffet," in which servers bring out large platters, and diners can take as much -- or as little -- as they choose. But at breakfast there's an honest-to-goodness menu of traditional morning... More >>
• Best Curly Fries
  Fric & Frac
  Forget the cold beer, the five-ounce jalapeno burgers, the three-for-$1.25 tacos all day Saturday, the slightly sodden neighborhood feel and the fact that Fric & Frac is one of the few places along 39th Street's restaurant row that's actually open and serving food on Sundays. Those are all good... More >>
• Best Calamari
  The Capital Grille
  Several terrific appetizers adorn the Capital Grille's menu, including a platter of cold shellfish and seafood cakes that are so gorgeously light that they all but float off the plate. But the restaurant's heaping dish of calamari fried in garlic butter is unparalleled. The squid is spicy,... More >>
• Best Beer
  Hogpound Brown Ale, McCoy's Public House
  Just because a restaurant houses its own microbrewery doesn't mean the contents of its pint glasses are of a finer quality than, say, Pabst Blue Ribbon. But at McCoy's Public House, brewer Keith Thompson cooks up quality contents. The finest among them? It's arguable, but the smooth Hogpound... More >>
• Best Westport Bartenders
  Dave's Stagecoach Inn
  They may not juggle bottles of liquor behind their backs or recite Coglin's law verbatim, but the bartenders at Dave's Stagecoach Inn give Westport's diamond-in-the-rough tavern its friendly -- but not too friendly -- vibe. Regulars and greenhorns alike receive attentive service and can feel at... More >>
• Best Artichoke
  Anthony's Restaurant and Lounge
  Anthony's has a lot going for it. The pleasures of this downtown Italian restaurant range from a karaoke singer whose voice is so good that most customers don't realize it's coming from within the establishment to the all-too-rare spumoni ice cream covered in rum for dessert. And we mustn't... More >>
• Best Place to Hear Weird Pickup Lines
  DeLuxe Lounge at Lucky Brewgrille
  Located in the Mission Mart, Lucky Brewgrille is a welcome addition to the area. With booths and tables in the upstairs bar, it's a mellow place to hang out -- except when there's a bachelor or bachelorette party. Then the veils, LifeSaver T-shirts and penis hats become a monument to that cheesy... More >>
• Best Pig Snoot Sandwich
  The Tenderloin Grill
  If you blink, you'll miss seeing this little corner diner, with its almost invisible sign. Inside the baby blue dining room, there's a tiny counter, a scattering of tables and a simple menu posted above the bubbling deep-fryer and the grill: cheeseburgers, hot dogs, tenderloins, french fries... More >>
• Best Neighborhood Bar
  J.J.'s Other Place
  Sometimes you want to go where everybody knows your name. In Kansas City, that desire should lead thirsty patrons to J.J.'s Other Place. The always-smiling barkeeps are hardly shy about greeting newcomers, welcoming representatives from all walks of life. An unassuming tavern from the outside,... More >>
• Best Waiter
  Robert Guiterrez
  Every server in Kansas City could take lessons from veteran Robert Guiterrez, who embodies polish, manners and attention to detail. Guiterrez (who bears an uncanny resemblance to silent film star Ramon Navarro) learned the ropes by working at Jasper's for years. Also known to many diners as the... More >>
• Best Vegetarian Dining
  Bo Ling's Sunday Night Vegetarian Feasts
  The smorgasbord at Bo Ling's vegetarian feasts is so delectable that vegetarians won't mind a bit that they have to wait until Sunday night for it. Owners Richard and Theresa Ng celebrate the Buddhist philosophy of kindness to all living beings with an all-you-can-eat vegetarian buffet for... More >>
• Best-Looking Waiters
  Yahooz
  "Where do they get these guys? Central Casting?" asks a regular of this Johnson County "cowboy" restaurant. At Yahooz, many of the waiters are handsome enough to have stepped out of a movie, although not necessarily a Western. Maybe a musical. "I think Rick, Joe and Matt are the most attractive... More >>
• Best Place to Meet the Opposite Sex, the Same Sex, or Whatever
  Balanca's
  Lori Burroughs moved Balanca's into the 18th and Grand space where Pyro was briefly aflame and set off some fireworks of her own. Other bars with large gay/lesbian clienteles welcome heterosexuals, too, but at Balanca's, there seems to be something going on that's not sidetracked by shows or... More >>
• Best Place to Get a Healthy Meal in KCK
  Your Diner
  It's hard to stay healthy in the inner city. Sometimes it seems the only dining choices are artery-cloggers like Burger King, KFC and McD's. But thanks to the United Nation of Islam (not to be confused with Louis Farrakhan's Nation of Islam) there's a safe alternative. Your Diner on Quindaro... More >>
• Best Restaurant For Feeling Like a Celebrity
  Le Fou Frog
  You don't need to walk into downtown's most effervescent French boite talking into a cell phone. Or wearing an Armani suit. Or tossing an ermine coat aside. At Le Fou Frog, all the diners feel as if they've stepped onto the set of Fellini's La Dolce Vita because the spirited energy of the place... More >>
• Best Fajitas
  Sol Azteca
  The fajitas at Sol Azteca sizzle so loudly you'd swear the kitchen is on fire. You can hear them coming even before the waitress steps into the dining room trailed by a long stream of savory smoke. (On Friday nights, when dozens of people order the dish, the dining room literally feels like a... More >>
• Best Bar Food
  W.J. McBride's Irish Pub
  No one driving by would guess that this bit o' Ireland in a Johnson County strip center would serve one of the best cheeseburgers in town (a half pound of beef topped with melted cheddar and crisp bacon). Not to mention steamed mussels in a broth of Guinness and garlic, a hearty Reuben sandwich... More >>
• Best Burger
  Town Topic
  Both of the venerable, urban Town Topics serve great cheap breakfasts and slabs of Golden Boy pies. (The second downtown location, at 1900 Baltimore, is within walking distance of the first but has more limited hours, from 5 a.m. to 3:30 p.m.) But it's the hamburgers and cheeseburgers, fresh off... More >>
• Best Spot For Tasteful Eavesdropping
  Café Europa
  Looking for a cozy, tasteful spot to take Aunt Jennie so you can hit her up for a small loan? Nursing a potent hangover from last night's club crawl and want a soothing spot where you won't run into any hipster you might have insulted before you passed out? Or just in the mood for a cup of java... More >>
• Best Place to Eat at a Counter
  Café Maison
  Café Maison doesn't have "counter dining" in the traditional sense. Diners don't take a seat facing a kitchen or a grill (there's a closet-sized kitchen in the back), but the high seats along the free-standing, rusty-colored Formica counter provide the best perches to enjoy chef Sally... More >>