Food & Drink >>

• Best Cheap Breakfast
  Ortega's Restaurant and Mini-Market
  Fans of this tiny neighborhood tienda like to keep the venue a secret. "It's a hidden jewel," says novelist Lou Jane Temple, who often shares one of Ortega's Restaurant and Mini-Market's red-leatherette booths on Sunday mornings with good friends, hot coffee and a newspaper. "You want to tell... More >>
• Best Gizzards
  Go-Chicken-Go
  We'll never eat those Chicken McNothings again. After gobbling up a box of Go-Chicken-Go's savory, deep-fried gizzards, the mooshy "parts is parts" meat wads parceled out by the big franchises simply don't do the trick. Gizzards, being pure, uncut body parts, offer a richness and taste of... More >>
• Best Burger (1 Comment)
  The Humdinger Drive-In
  Although it looks like a set from the TV series American Dream, this vintage 1962 drive-in is the real thing. Patrons drive into the Humdinger's parking lot (on a nearly vacant stretch between Wabash and Prospect), get out, order a juicy double cheeseburger -- made to order with pickles,... More >>
• Best Beefcakes
  McDonald's
  In a well-known meat town, it only makes sense that there are some Grade-A beefcakes at our McDonald's -- though we're not referring to the food. This past summer, we noticed that the McDonald's at 103rd Street and State Line was staffed by a gaggle of hot Brazilian men. Tall and dark-haired,... More >>
• Best Cheap Steak
  5 ox. Filet at the Bamboo Hut
  There's a lot to love at the Bamboo Hut. There's the idea that it's out on Highway 40 in Independence, past a few strip clubs and no-tell motels; just driving there feels sexy in that seedy, wrong-part-of-town kind of way. There's the fact that, inside, it feels like a wood-paneled, basement rec... More >>
• Best Place For a the-Hell-With-It Carbohydrate Binge
  Altizio's
  It's one thing to fall off the wagon while in recovery, but quite another to slide off the gravy train while following one of those carbohydrate-free diet plans. After all, if nature had meant for men and women to live on meat and cheese alone, a chef like Mike Saluzzi would never have been... More >>
• Best New Salads
  Thai Paradise
  People tend to think of the salad as the dieter's dish: bland, innocuous, predictably lettucey. Not so, we say. At least not at Thai Paradise, which opened this year. The most unassuming salad there, the Paradise Salad, is a bed of lettuce with fresh cilantro and ginger, grilled shrimp and... More >>
• Best Happy Hour Food
  McCormick & Schmick's Seafood Restaurant
  Hungry drinkers can make a sensational cheap meal out of two or three choices from the eight offerings listed on the $1.95 menu of Happy Hour munchies at McCormick & Schmick's. The portions are especially generous, and everything is delicious, with high points for the teaming bowl of steamed... More >>
• Best Place To Eat and Smoke
  Café Rumi
  As more local restaurants frown on smoking, it's getting harder for nicotine junkies to find tobacco-tolerant tables. But smoking diners aren't treated as pariahs in the outdoor dining area at Café Rumi (OK, it's a parking lot), whether they're puffing on store-bought cigarettes or... More >>
• Best Weekly Specials
  McCoy's Public House and Brew Kitchen
  "McCoy's Public House and Brew Kitchen was conceptualized with one very simple goal in mind," explains the Westport restaurant's Web site. "We want to offer our guests more variety in their dining experience than any other restaurant in Kansas City." Given the size of the menu -- it sits in a... More >>
• Best Dinner Under $10
  Fried Half Chicken Dinner
  For $7.95, Harold's serves up a plate of crispy fried chicken with either a vegetable or a slice of quiche, a choice of potato (mashed, cottage fries, french fries or baked), a salad or soup, and rolls and butter. A buck for a glass of iced tea -- which includes free refills -- and another buck... More >>
• Best Urban Breakfast
  Cup & Saucer
  We're fans of the hearty and creative breakfasts at midtown's three Muddy's; that they went nonsmoking this year inspired us to pay more visits. And down in the River Market, breakfast options expanded when the legendary Cascone's moved from its tiny home in the City Market complex to a much... More >>
• Best Banana Split with a Japanese Twist
  King Kong at Matsu
  If you've ordered healthy food, no matter how it's been prepared, it remains inherently healthy. That's important when considering the potassium-packed banana, which surely retains its good-for-you rating even when it's fried, drizzled with chocolate and paired with green-tea ice cream, as it is... More >>
• Best Strawberry Shortcake
  Frankie's on the Plaza
  Strawberry shortcake has become something of a culinary parody in most local restaurants. The shortcake -- if it really is shortcake and not a sugar-coated Pillsbury biscuit or a neon-yellow Hostess cake -- is often dry and crumbly or too moist and gummy. But the pastry chef at Frankie's on the... More >>
• Best Aphrodisiac at a Kansas City Restaurant
  Grilled Foie Gras
  It's not always listed on the dinner menu, but when chef-owner Emmanuel Langlade does offer this seductive slice of silken goose liver at Aixois, it can start the Brookside version of the French revolution. "It's definitely an aphrodisiac," Langlade says. "But some diners have to be convinced of... More >>
• Best Sunday Brunch
  Café Maison
  Best Sunday Brunch An interesting combination of light buffet and off-the-menu dishes, Café Maison's European-style brunch presents two options: the cold buffet spread of croissants, cheeses, patés, sliced meats, salads and pastries for $9.95; or, for a few bucks more, a luscious... More >>
• Best Place to Have a Melodramatic Conversation Over Dinner
  Matsu Japanese Restaurant
  It begins just as you're about to sink your teeth into some raw eel: It's that slow, steady crescendo known as "Chariots of Fire." Played several times through the course of any meal at Matsu, the song lends a sense of triumphant boldness to even the most mundane utterances. Consider the phrase... More >>
• Best Restaurant When Someone Else is Buying
  The Raphael Restaurant
  The cozy, romantically lighted dining room in the basement of the Raphael Hotel is like few others in the city, evoking a sense of pre-World War II dignity: tables are cloaked in heavy linen, the china is pretty and the service is extraordinarily attentive. The Raphael Restaurant's longtime chef... More >>
• Best Place to Take a Drunken Mess of a Date
  Grand Street Café
  Maybe it's the fact that the Grand Street Café's dining room, boasting over-the-top décor by Hal Swanson (think of the junglelike garden in Tennessee Williams' play Suddenly Last Summer), is almost always alive with vibrant energy and high spirits. Maybe it's the servers, who have... More >>
• Best New Restaurant
  Café Trocadero
  Amazingly, there are culinary sophisticates who still haven't stumbled into restaurateur Chris Sefreyn's tribute to metropolitan boîtes, where there's no gimmick other than divinely inspired food and tastefully appointed décor. The space that housed the R.T.'s Deli has been given a... More >>
• Best Recreation of Pottery Barn in a Bar
  Red Room at Re:Verse
  Shopping in the Martha Stewartized atmosphere of Pottery Barn can drive people to drink in two ways. Looking at the bar accoutrements can inspire thirst, and looking at one too many sage-colored porcelain egg cups can drive one insane, thus leading to drink. However, if none of the above... More >>
• Best No-Nonsense Name For A Bar
  The Bar
  Located by Diamond Joe's strip club and Mo's Lounge on Chouteau Trafficway in North Kansas City, The Bar is just what you might expect from its name: a utilitarian place where the beer is cheap and cold. There is, however, a surprisingly wide array of liquor. Charming touches include... More >>
• Best Alcoholic Slurpee
  The Daily Dose Special
  Best described as a frappuccino with a kick, the Daily Dose Special is a mocha dream that can be ordered with a shot of espresso, vodka or rum. This frozen concoction is available in mocha, bianca mocha and caramel, and it's a luscious blend of creamy and icy, all topped with a mound of whipped... More >>
• Best Provocatively Named Drink
  Green Thong
  Sure, there are more provocatively named drinks, like the Blow Job and the Buttery Nipple. But the Green Thong is a name that's discreetly naughty. The drink itself isn't too bad, either -- a milky-green libation served in a martini glass, smelling and tasting of coconuts, it's evocative of... More >>
• Best Place To Eat After 3A.M.
  The Heriford Grill
  It doesn't matter what part of town you're coming from at that wee hour -- the nightclubs in Westport, the Northland casinos, a late factory shift downtown -- the chatty, chain-smoking gals behind the counter at the Heriford Grill have the coffee brewing and hash browns on the grill. The tiny... More >>
• Best Least Pretentious Plaza Bar
  Fred P. Ott's
  Because the Plaza is the Plaza, practically all of its bars tend to attract the Stepford-type crowd -- droids who are entirely too perfumed, tanorexic, gelled and shrieky loud. Which is why we like Fred P. Ott's, the low-key watering hole where the service-industry crowd gathers after shifts.... More >>
• Best Bar Mascot
  Loretta the Mannequin at Chez Charlie's
  There are many eye-catching objects at Chez Charlie's, a fantastic midtown bar reminiscent of a '70s rec room. There's the old-school jukebox that spins 45s, the working TV that melted in an apartment fire (they call it Jabba the Set) and the faded-blue cartoony bird pinata that grins kookily... More >>
• Best Sliver of Italy
  Bella Napoli
  There's a map of Italy posted in the back of Bella Napoli, an Italian deli in Brookside. The boot-shaped country looks like a pin cushion, attached to the wall by more than thirty thumbtacks marking the provinces in which owner Jake Imperiale has traveled. When he decided to open an Italian deli... More >>
• Best Hotel Bar
  12 Baltimore
  A hotel bar is much like an airport -- both are exciting, bustling, cosmopolitan-feeling places with excellent people watching. Who is that lonely businessman nursing a drink at the bar? What convention brings these people to town? It's fun to make up stories about people, but then again, we're... More >>
• Best Restaurant Murals
  Taqueria Mexico No. 3
  Dinner at the Taqueria Mexico on Kansas Avenue in Kansas City, Kansas, feels like dinner in Mexico. That's partly because it's a cinder-block building with interior walls lined in mint-green linoleum. But what we really like are the rustic murals depicting life south of the border. Sandy deserts... More >>
• Best Drink That Looks Like an Accident in a Glass
  The Mambo Taxi
  At Mi Cocina, the chi-chi Mexican restaurant-cum-bar on the Plaza, the crowd is trendy -- but the drinks are even trendier versions of old classics. Take, for example, the Mambo Taxi, a frozen margarita swirled with sangria and served with a wedge of lime. But with the pale yellow of the... More >>
• Best Chef
  Jasper Mirabile Jr.
  Even as he prepares for the launch of his first cookbook (The Jasper's Cookbook: Recipes From Kansas City's Legendary Italian Restaurant), 33-year-old J.J. Mirabile rarely gets a moment away from the kitchen of the restaurant named for his late father, the original Jasper. The elder Mirabile was... More >>
• Best Community-Spirited Bar
  3rd Street Pub
  Many places describe themselves as the Cheers of [insert name of city here], but frankly, we never believed that sort of hype -- until we went to the 3rd Street Pub in downtown Lee's Summit. This friendly, somewhat raucous establishment is an unpretentious place where regulars make strangers... More >>
• Best Place for a Game to go into OT
  Minsky's Pizza
  In such a sports-dominated town, finding a place to watch the game is an important rite of passage for any sports fan. One place we recommend is the Minsky's in the City Market. Its three large screens and its multitude of TVs provide enough game-watching opportunities to satisfy even the most... More >>
• Best News Junkie Décor In A Bar
  The Newsroom
  Is Christiane Amanpour your idol? Did the O'Reilly-Franken feud excite you beyond all reason? If you're a news junkie, then you don't need us to tell you in 20-point boldface type to check out the Newsroom, a gritty watering hole decorated with old front pages of the Kansas City Times and the... More >>
• Best Drink Special
  Quarter Draws
  Capitalizing on the frat boy's drink-until-you-drop mentality, Harpo's in Westport offers a quarter draw beer special on Tuesday nights. Loud music kills most conversations, but who needs to talk? Getting drunk for the price of pinball rules. More >>
• Best Political Power Lunch Spot
  The Peach Tree Restaurant
  Forget all those stuffy bistros on the Plaza. If you really want to cut a deal with Kansas City's power elite, the place to go is the Peach Tree Restaurant at 18th and Vine. With its semiprivate dining room and its small, lean-in-and-whisper tables, the high-class joint seems to have been... More >>
• Best Place to Feel Like a Don
  Cigar Box
  The Cigar Box is low-lit, with roses on each table and a humidified cigar room in one corner. A guy plays keys and sings sappy tunes at one end of the bar, and a naked-lady painting hangs just above a liquor shelf. Late into the weekend hours, patrons who enter are greeted by a raised-glass... More >>
• Best-Looking Waiters
  Café Trocadero
  There isn't much in the way of visual art hanging on Café Trocadero's walls, but there are a few living masterpieces (think Michelangelo or John Singer Sargent) working the dining room and shaking martinis behind the bar. Tall Ryan Wright was formerly a runway model, and Eric James once... More >>
• Best Waitress
  Brenda Smith
  Quick-witted Brenda Smith has been schlepping plates for so long she could almost do it in her sleep. (And if she's working her third back-to-back shift, she probably is.) That gives her that ideal "sixth sense" sassy veteran servers always have: They know, at once, which dinner needs to be... More >>
• Best Diner Atmosphere
  Chubby's Breakfast and Burgers
  Kansas City just isn't a diner town -- and if you think it is, you have spent very little time in New York or Chicago. The usual assortment of midtown diners might be half-decent, unhazardous greasy spoons at 2 a.m., but you'll be in the company of people who are there only to deal with the fact... More >>
• Best-Looking Waitresses
  Captain Ribman's Meat Market
  Despite a name -- and menu -- loaded with double entendre, Captain Ribman's Meat Market is a combination sports bar and barbecue restaurant, not some college-town pick-up joint. Really. Sure, there's plenty of sexual tension at the bar between the curvy coeds and broad-shouldered college boys,... More >>
• Best Vegan Lunch Option
  Addis Ababa Ethiopian Cafe
  No matter what you order at Addis Ababa, you'll either look as though you've lost an epic highlighter fight or you'll leave behind a neon napkin. Oddly, while the food isn't fluorescent, the stains show up that way. Even more intriguingly, menu items that seem unassuming taste remarkably... More >>
• Best Chile Roaster
  Larry Mallin Hatch Chile of KC
  OK, a more appropriate award to give Larry Mallin would be Only Chile Roaster. After all, the rule behind Best Of is that the winner beats its competition based on the Pitch's thoroughly researched yet admittedly subjective reasoning. Larry Mallin didn't have any competition. Anyone --... More >>
• Best Get-Drunk-Without-Noticing Drink
  The Root Beer Float
  Flash back to the first time your taste buds encountered the bitter elixir that is alcohol. For most people, that sense of revulsion fades with time, replaced by a fondness for the taste of fermented grain. But for a rare few, the instinct to spit it out, and quick, never goes away -- unless, of... More >>
• Best Place to Eat at a Counter
  Café Venezuela
  The chatter may be more lively (and en inglés) at a more traditional diner counter, but the thirteen-stool counter at Café Venezuela becomes a veritable United Nations during the lunch hour. That's when gregarious owner Jose Garcia starts serving thick sandwiches, fried empanadas... More >>
• Best Waiter
  Scott Henze
  Scott Henze, a Colorado native, has been working lunch shifts at the Kemper Museum's Café Sebastienne since he arrived in town three years ago (he also works Friday and Saturday nights at MelBee's in Mission), and fans of the restaurant have grown attached to his smoky voice, gentle... More >>
• Best Comfort Food Downtown
  The Downtown Grill and Convenience Store
  For downtown workers who want to go out to lunch on a budget, the choices are limited: sandwiches, burritos, sandwiches, sandwiches and more sandwiches. That's not a good thing on those dreary Wednesdays when the only salvation lies in a steaming plate of home cooking. When we get to feeling... More >>
• Best Weird-Sounding Sandwich Order
  Turkey-on-Bun-on-Bread at Gates
  Ordering at Gates is a delicate matter. There is an army-caliber ordering bureaucracy in place, and the barbecue staff wants to move customers through it as quickly as possible. Everything has a precise name, because waiting for customers to haltingly describe what they want is not the Gates... More >>
• Best Place to Start Your Morning
  Coffee Bay
  "We get up pretty early in the coffee business," Coffee Bay proprietor Ron Colin writes in his cafe's newsletter, Drum Beat. "We generally see people before their day really gets under way, so we make a point of leaving them with some positive stuff to carry them through at the office. I'm not... More >>