Food & Drink >>

• Best Place to Eat at a Counter
  Cascone's Grill
  For 31 years, the 13 red leatherette-topped stools at Cascone's Grill have been the best spot in town to see poetry in motion: the men of the Cascone family cooking eggs, hash browns and yellow pancakes on the sizzling grill while their sisters do a dozen tasks at once, from pouring steaming... More >>
• Best Pastry Shop (2 Comments)
  Wally's Pastry Shop
  Waldemar Uhl is no ordinary baker. He's a konditormeister -- German for certified master pastry chef. Wally trained for years in Europe, working his way up from apprentice before earning the equivalent of a doctorate in decadent dessert making. Housed in a small strip mall, Wally's Pastry Shop... More >>
• Best Place to Try a Weird Omelet
  Bell Street Mama's
  Remember that Lily Tomlin character on Sesame Street, the one who sat in the oversized rocking chair talking about bizarre concoctions she'd like to eat? That character would love Bell Street Mama's list of 51 omelet combinations. Green beans, bacon and onion? Pineapple and cottage cheese? Hot... More >>
• Best Cheap Breakfast
  Calypso's
  The Isle of Capri Casino doesn't want its patrons to waste one quarter on anything other than the slot machines. It lets customers save the big bills for gambling, charging only $3.95 for a winning morning meal. The buffet is loaded with made-to-order omelets, scrambled eggs and bacon,... More >>
• Best Brunch
  Blue Bird Bistro
  Lavish Sunday-morning brunches, centered on steam tables heaped with congealed eggs Benedict and yellow globs of scrambled eggs, are all but passé. Sunday morning is much more leisurely and satisfying at a soothing spot like the Blue Bird Bistro, with its antique tile floors, crisp linen... More >>
• Best Affordable Lunch
  Joe's Buy the Slice
  One buck. That's it. From 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. on Tuesdays and Thursdays, Joe's serves up plate-filling, pan-crust slices of pizza for $1 each. It's not a free lunch, but it's damn close. More >>
• Best Lunch Buffet
  Ruchi
  Ruchi's ersatz formal dining room alone is worth the price of the buffet. Past the entrance, all smoky and mysterious from a burning stick of potent incense, is a dramatically appointed room with tiny "crystal" chandeliers, glass-topped tables, masses of artificial flowers and tinkly, soft... More >>
• Best Lunch Spot for Illicit Lovers
  Vineyard Restaurant
  Far from the prying eyes of corporate deal makers and ladies who lunch on the Plaza, the Vineyard Restaurant is the perfect spot for a secret afternoon rendezvous. Tucked away in a tiny town half an hour from Kansas City's skyscrapers, this little restaurant has intimate tables for two draped... More >>
• Best Place to Pretend You're in Europe
  Le Fou Frog
  Too often, American restaurants that serve foreign food simply display a few trinkets and flags and stereotypical pieces of artwork to appeal to diners' imaginations. But Fou Frog is an exception. It doesn't feel like a French restaurant in the United States. It feels like a real French... More >>
• Best Way to Go to Mexico Without Actually Going There
  Late Night Tacos at El Pueblito
  The city is full of Mexican restaurants, but hardly any of them are authentic. Most just sell us what Gringos think Mexican food ought to be -- flour tortillas with ground beef, orange cheese, lettuce and chopped tomatoes. But at El Pueblito, the meat is shredded or braised to a tangy crisp, and... More >>
• Best Old-Fashioned Ice Cream Shop
  A Sweet Expression
  Downtown Lee's Summit feels as though it were hermetically sealed in 1953. It still hosts a hardware store, a drug store, a barber shop with a spinning striped poll -- and A Sweet Expression -- an old-fashioned ice cream shop like the ones on the cover of the Saturday Evening Post. On a... More >>
• Best Lemonade (1 Comment)
  James' Lemonade
  James Anderson got into the lemonade business after he opened a restaurant next door to his beauty salon at 18th and Parallel in Northeast Kansas City, Kansas. He didn't serve any sugary soda pop, just his fruit punch and lemonade, which he made from a secret recipe. His satisfying elixirs... More >>
• Best Place to Buy a Coconut Soda
  African Tropical Market
  Coconut sodas are never out of season. In the blaze of summer, they squelch the heat. In the freeze of winter, they evoke beaches lined with loping palm trees. Problem is, you can't just pop a couple of coins into a vending machine and grab a coconut brew. Your best bet is to swing through... More >>
• Best Signature Coffee Drink
  Cracked Ice at LattéLand
  OK, so LatteLand is a terrible name for a coffee shop. It is embarrassing to make plans to meet there, because uttering the word LattéLand makes you sound like something you never wanted to become: a yuppie. Even the coffee shop on Friends -- Central Perk -- sounds rough-edged and gritty... More >>
• Best Bubble Tea
  Blue Koi
  The bubble-tea craze started in Taiwan in the mid-1980s, and now the funky fad has made it to Kansas City. Also known as Boba -- a Cantonese slang term for "nipple" -- the bubbles in bubble tea are large, gummy tapioca balls made from sweet-potato flour. At the Blue Koi, servers shake up the tea... More >>
• Best Place for High Tea
  Rose Garden Café
  Although the term high tea brings to mind sniffing ladies with their pinkies curled as they sip from fine China cups, the tradition actually started in the 1700s as a way for the British working class to stave off hunger pangs between meals. Now, it's fun just to invite someone to high tea.... More >>
• Best Burger
  The Daily Limit
  There probably isn't a saloon on Kansas City's south side with more cigarette smoke, more raucous laughter -- and less charm -- than this joint in the Red Bridge Shopping Center. Still, it's lovable for those reasons and one more: terrific half-pound hamburgers that are amazingly cheap,... More >>
• Best Pork Sandwich
  Winslow's City Market Barbecue
  Any chef worth his weight in suey knows that pork is the most flavor-friendly meat -- but ribs are messy. They should be eaten only on those special occasions when you don't care if you look like a slob. But Winslow's City Market Barbecue carves the pigs nice and thin and piles them up with... More >>
• Best Brain Sandwich
  Clem's Drive Inn
  Since it opened in 1966, this low-slung, concrete-block-and-brick building has been an Independence institution, serving "low-fat crumbly burgers" (the loose-meat kind, cooked with onions and tangy barbecue sauce), cherry malts and milkshakes -- as well as its most unusual delicacy: fried brain... More >>
• Best Pork Tenderloin
  Bottom's Up Bar & Grill
  It's well worth driving 46 minutes northwest of Kansas City and winding down to the ungentrified old French Bottoms area of St. Joseph, Missouri, to find an unglamorous but tidy neighborhood joint with the highly suggestive name Bottom's Up. It's not easy to find; the sign isn't flashy, and many... More >>
• Best Barbecue
  Jake Edwards Bar-B-Q
  It's all in the wood. Cook Wayne Robinson confesses that the meat at Jake Edwards Bar-B-Q is lip-lickety good because of the hickory. "Some places in town -- I won't name names -- use oak or oak mixed with hickory," he explains. "We're one of the few places in town that uses hickory... More >>
• Best Fast-Food Joint
  Burger Boy
  The stretch of highway just east of old-town Lee's Summit would be a carbon copy of every other bypass in America were it not for Burger Boy -- the rare fast-food joint that breaks the chains. There's only one Burger Boy in the entire world. And eating there isn't just a sentimental tour through... More >>
• Best Place to Nourish Body and Soul Simultaneously
  Heartland Sangha's Monday Night Eating Meditation
  Every now and then, it might not hurt to do what your mama told you -- slow down, eat a nutritious meal, chew each bite ten times and savor the flavor. That's where the Heartland Sangha's Monday Night Eating Meditation comes in. The group, which follows the teachings of the 76-year-old... More >>
• Best Soup
  Pineapple-tomato soup, at Saigon 39
  Pineapple-tomato soup is best enjoyed on a chilly evening, surrounded by the golden glow of Saigon 39's neon lighting. The fragrant brew, with chunks of pineapple and tomato and bits of cilantro floating in its sweet-and-sour broth, is one delicious way to warm the soul. It's better than a down... More >>
• Best Egg Rolls
  Bo Ling's
  Although food historian John Mariani insists that egg rolls (like won ton soup, barbecued spareribs and sweet-and-sour pork) don't resemble actual Chinese dishes and "were all concocted to whet Americans' appetites," the thick rolls -- which don't contain egg, by the way -- have become... More >>
• Best Dinner for Less Than $6
  TJ's Café
  First-timers typically pass by the fifty-year-old TJ's Café and think, That can't be a restaurant -- it's a double-wide trailer. But when's the last time you scored a complete dinner for less than six singles? TJ's started as a tiny hot dog stand in 1952. These days, the dinner specials... More >>
• Best Place to Blow a Small Fortune
  The Capital Grille
  So you won the lottery or got a long-awaited raise, and the dough is burning a hole in your pocket. The high-toned but unsnobbish Capital Grille is the best place in town to act like Diamond Jim Brady. You can even set a dollar bill aflame to light a cigar, and no one will say a word. Start by... More >>
• Best Comfort Food
  Baked Chicken
  Stephenson's Old Apple Farm
  If Stephenson's famous chicken, baked in heavy cream and butter, was good enough for the Better Homes & Gardens cookbook, damn it, it's good enough for diners needing a trip back to their childhoods (or the childhood they wished they had). This 56-year-old restaurant serves the kind of dishes... More >>
• Best Tofu
  Ginger Tofu at Viet Nam
  Finally, the lovely, jiggling, white bean-curd product has come into its own, and diners have learned the ancient secret of tofu: its tastelessness is its beauty. It sucks up the flavor of whatever you cook it with. Therein lies the yumminess of Viet Nam's ginger tofu. It's fried, then cooked in... More >>
• Best Vegetarian Restaurant
  Udipi Café
  Because Kansas City is smack in the middle of the meat-happy Midwest -- where even "vegetarian" restaurants usually serve sea critters -- the Udipi Café may be the only place in the metro with a truly meatless menu. The food is inspired by the cuisine of a coastal town in southern India... More >>
• Best Place to Take a First Date
  The Wa
  For drinkers, the benefits of saki on a first date simply cannot be understated. First, it's foreign, which means it's legitimate in a way that a shot of Wild Turkey never will be. Second, it arrives in a miniature pitcher-jug that even guys can call cute. Third, and most important, it packs a... More >>
• Best Aphrodisiac
  Escargot in garlic butter and chilled beef tongue
  Café Paris Brasserie & Bar
  Everyone knows the traditional aphrodisiac foods: black olives, truffles, chocolate, strawberries and oysters. Leave it to the Marseilles-born Patrick Quillec, father of six, to make sexy dishes out of two icky-sounding ingredients: beef tongue and plump snails. The snails come canned from... More >>
• Best Place for a Vegan to Take a Meat-Loving Date
  Blue Bird Bistro
  Once upon a time, the Blue Bird was a hippie-ish little vegetarian eatery. But today, it's the best place in town for a brown-rice-and broccoli-eatin' vegan to enjoy a harmonious date with a give-it-to-me-still-mooin' carnivore. For starters, there's the veg-friendly herbed hummus, a creamy... More >>
• Best Steak
  Center-cut Kansas City strip
  Benton's Steak & Chop House
  With so many flashy national steak houses in town, it's easy to forget the local joints, like Benton's, on the twentieth floor of the Westin Crown Center Hotel. Like the wallflower who gets ignored when brash new beauties dominate the dance, Benton's has been looking dowdy lately. The room still... More >>
• Best Restaurant Bathroom
  Blue Koi women's bathroom
  First of all, we'd like to extend an apology to men, whose bathrooms aren't as good as women's. We don't know why you put up with that blatant disregard for equality. But we can't fight that battle for you. We can, however, equip you with a recommendation for how to get into the women's bathroom... More >>
• Best Decadent Dessert
  Strawberry Borghese Cake
  Jasper's Restaurant
  The Borghese family was one of the most powerful in Rome, and it built impressive palazzi and elaborate villas in the Eternal City. Perhaps that's what the late Jasper Mirabile and his wife, Josephine, remembered when they saw a towering layer cake in the window of a pastry shop in New York City... More >>
• Best Testicular-Looking Dessert
  Milk balls
  Taj Mahal
  Served in pairs, the doughy, flesh-colored milk balls at Taj Mahal are dense and sweet. The inch-thick globes rest in a light yellow syrup, sitting together in a little dessert bowl looking like ... well, like balls. After Taj Mahal's spicy main courses, biting into these round nuggets is a most... More >>
• Best-Looking Chef
  Ray Comisky
  The Capital Grille
  If Aaron Spelling decided to film a new youth-oriented series in an upscale Midwestern restaurant, he'd have to hire an actor who looked as sexy, muscular and clean-cut as the Capital Grille's Michigan-born Ray Comisky. A graduate of Johnson & Wales University, Comisky has, at age 33, garnered... More >>
• Best-Looking Waiters
  P.F. Chang's China Bistro
  Even the normally sanguine Kimberly Cacioppo, who works as a part-time hostess at P.F. Chang's China Bistro, gets a little perkier talking about the handsome men who whirl around this bustling dining room in crisp white shirts, tight pants and white aprons. "They're darling, darling, darling,"... More >>
• Best Unsung Chef
  Wayne Cox, Executive Chef
  Other chefs tease Wayne Cox about his "institutional cooking" because he oversees a kitchen that prepares buffet dinners for 600 people at a time. Local dinner-theater fare had earned a bad reputation over the years, and at the New Theatre, Cox and his predecessor, Mark Rohman (now the theater's... More >>
• Best Restaurant for Spotting a Celebrity
  Jasper's Restaurant
  Back in the 1970s and '80s, when Jasper Mirabile Sr. was running the fanciest Italian restaurant in town (the waiters wore tailored tuxedos and prepared many of the dishes tableside), the old Midtown Jasper's attracted all the big show-business names passing through town: Bob Hope, Mitzi Gaynor,... More >>
• Best Waitress
  Alethea Kugel
  P.F. Chang's
  These days, it's not enough for a great waitress simply to know a marinara from a marinade or a martini from a Manhattan. By checking out their posture, their vibrations and moods, a savvy server can understand instantly whether her customers want service as aloof as a British butler or as bawdy... More >>
• Best Waiter
  Bruce Owens
  It's not often one meets a polished server such as Bruce Owens -- the wine steward and server at the Peppercorn Duck Club -- who has made a career decision to stay in the restaurant business. Owens has been a fixture at the Duck Club for 21 years, most of his adult life, and his experience is... More >>
• Best New Restaurant
  The Malay Café
  Other restaurants have opened in the past twelve months with more splash, money and hype. But the Malay Café, a tiny family owned eatery in Kansas City North, scores in so many other ways: its unique Malaysian cuisine (perhaps the world's first fusion cuisine), its friendly staff, its... More >>
• Best Place for Winers
  Boozefish's Wednesday Night Winefests
  "We are a wine bar," says Maija Diethelm, owner of Boozefish. "But my goal was not to be pretentious." A visit to one of the bar's Wednesday Night Winefests shows that she's succeeded. The fun, laid-back atmosphere attracts a wide range of people. Revelers pay $15 to sample two reds and two... More >>
• Best Place to Splurge on a Glass of Wine
  Iliki Café
  Shakespeare called wine "a good familiar creature." That's what it is at Iliki Café, where diners are surrounded by the rich dark reds, browns and golds of cozy Middle Eastern décor and the casual banter of servers -- no wine-snob waiters here. The wine list contains more than... More >>
• Best Beer
  Red Light Raspberry, at McCoy's Public House and Brewkitchen
  The best thing about McCoy's Red Light Raspberry Beer is its subtlety. It's not a syrupy-sweet swill like some flavored beers. It's simply McCoy's own house-brewed Landing Light Lager -- which a manager calls "our rival to Bud Light" -- infused with the slightest hint of natural raspberry... More >>
• Best Bar Food
  Harry's Bar & Tables
  Tapas and dinner items start coming out of the tiny kitchen at Harry's Bar & Tables at 4 p.m. -- which isn't too early to drink an Up All Night (raspberry vodka, Red Bull and a splash of cherry juice) or a Mercy Martini (Citron vodka, amaretto, orange juice, cranberry juice and a splash of... More >>
• Best Vegan Bar Food
  McCoy's Public House and Brewkitchen
  When the Romans invaded Britain thousands of years ago, they brought the tradition of brewpubs and a stern rule for bar owners: "Thou shalt not serve vegetables, nor any health foods, nor anything not covered with beast grease and riddled with gristle, unless it be a wilted garnish." Bar owners... More >>
• Best Make-Out Bar
  Harry's Bar and Tables
  It's a familiar sight in bars around town: the Wastoidal Make-Out Session. Although its participants are highly mockable, we understand the phenomenon. When the urge to mash strikes, sometimes you just have to seize the moment and start PDA-ing away. One of the more discreet places to go at it... More >>
• Best Screwdriver
  New Pointe Grille
  We're fans of orange juice and its citrusy goodness. However, we're bigger fans of orange juice when it's in screwdriver form. Admittedly, it's hard to screw up a screwdriver -- it's just OJ and vodka. And we definitely won't object if the vodka-to-OJ ratio is off. But we started quivering with... More >>
• Best Happy Hour
  The Blue Room
  We're still hoping for bustling street life at 18th and Vine, but the jazz district does provide a perfect spot to unwind after a long day at the office. At happy hour on Mondays, Thursdays and Fridays, the Blue Room is always full of friendly regulars -- but it doesn't feel too crowded. Office... More >>
• Best Urban Happy Hour
  Garrett's Corner Market
  There's nothing unusual about a place that offers $1 domestic beers for happy hour, not even when it tosses in $4 martinis. But a place that combines $1 beers, $4 martinis and $2 margaritas is going out of its way to satisfy happy-hour hunters. Granted, the newly relocated Garrett's still has... More >>
• Best Supercheap Happy Hour
  Buzzard Beach
  When the economy isn't good, the beer doesn't have to be, either. That's why the daily special at Buzzard Beach -- 75-cent draws of Busch, Bud Light and Pabst Blue Ribbon and $2 well drinks from 3 to 8 p.m. -- is fit for a cash-strapped king. And don't let anyone complain about the bar's rough... More >>
• Best Bar in Which to Be a Brunette
  Aqua
  Maybe it's the fresh-pineapple-infused vodka playing tricks on our minds (damn you, tropical elixir!), but everywhere we look when we're at Aqua, we see various shades of brunette. And what are the chances of that happening in Kansas City, home of the "her roots are darker than her tan"... More >>
• Best Place to Go Greek
  Harpo's
  Do you ever have the urge to break out into "Beta Sweetheart," group hug your girlfriends or give someone the secret handshake while out in public? If so, Harpo's is the place where you can indulge in these sorts of frat-tastic or soro-licious behavior. With its large back patio, multiple TVs... More >>
• Best Gathering Place for Yuppies
  Granfalloon Bar & Grill
  Drive by the Granfalloon on any weekend night, and there will usually be a line of trendoid-wanna-bes waiting to enter the inner sanctum of yuppiedom. Once inside, it's wall-to-wall chicks in hoochie-mama Express clothing and farm-fresh frat boys, all of their pheromones emitting so intensely,... More >>
• Best Hotel Bar
  The Oak Bar at the Fairmont Hotel
  We admit it -- we're suckers for anything that has a Plaza view, and the bar-and-lounge area at the Fairmont is no exception. We love its huge windows and spectacular view, its soaring ceiling and its sophisticated décor. The thing we love the most, though (besides the alcohol), is its... More >>
• Best Gathering to Infiltrate
  KC Chamber of Commerce's Business After Hours
  We realize we probably shouldn't be revealing this, but we can't help it, because the Chamber of Commerce's Business After Hours (i.e., happy hour) events are pretty damn fun and a really great idea. These monthly networking gatherings occur in different cool locations around town, such as the... More >>
• Best Place to Get Sloshed
  Belly Up Bar at Oceans of Fun
  If you don't like to get wet, you'll have a hard time getting served here. The Belly Up Bar sits in the middle of a crystalline swimming pool inside Castaway Cove, Oceans of Fun's little adult oasis in a world of screaming kids. If you want a drink, you'll have to take the plunge, swim over and... More >>