Food: Chow >>

• Best French Toast
  Café Maison
  Purists, beware -- the stuffed French toast at Café Maison is more like a French toast sandwich. Walnuts and Granny Smith apple slices piled between two slices of cinnamon-raisin bread, then covered in butter and maple syrup, make for a crunchy, fruity breakfast experience. It's about as... More >>
• Best Quiche
  Room 39
  By the time Ted Habiger and Andrew Sloan opened Room 39 last November, they had transformed a 39th Street storefront formerly occupied by the dark and well-worn Muddy's coffee shop into a strikingly bright, cheerful and sunny space that's sophisticated by virtue of its simplicity. Their menu's... More >>
• Best Specialty Bread
  Fervere
  Fervere's name means passion in Latin -- and the word pretty much sums up how customers feel about this neighborhood bakery, which is open only three days a week. The bread sells out fast; anyone who has stood in line as the last loaves disappear from the shelves has probably wondered whether... More >>
• Best Smoothie
  The Coffee Girls
  The name might be Coffee Girls -- and they do make a mean latte -- but we're fans of another beverage at this joint. Though the smoothie has often been spoiled by other shall-remain-nameless places that, horror of horrors, make them from mixes, Coffee Girls serves them up fresh, using only... More >>
• Best Roast Beef Sandwich (1 Comment)
  Beef on Weck Europa, A Café
  A $9 roast beef sandwich may give some customers a cow, but Brookside's Europa, a Café is the only restaurant in town serving roast beef on weck, the most famous sandwich to come out of Buffalo, New York. Europa's chef and co-owner, Scott Cowell, fell in love with the distinctive... More >>
• Best BLT
  The Peanut
  Peanut owner Rich Kenny likes to keep his bacon supplier a secret. All we could get out of a cook (code name: Deep Snout) is that the pigs are raised somewhere in Kansas. Regardless of their origin, the strips provide great happiness when cooked and joined with wheat bread, lettuce, tomato, red... More >>
• Best Milkshake
  Foo's Fabulous Frozen Custard
  The best milkshake in town isn't exactly a milkshake. It's a Foo's Concrete: vanilla custard blended with your choice of ingredients. Here's how we see it: If you have a hankerin' for ice cream, don't waste the calories on some basic shake. (Plus, if we're being honest, the triple-thick... More >>
• Best Hot Dog
  Relish
  After years running one of the city's most upscale dining rooms, Metropolis American Grill, restaurateur David Rabinovitz decided he wanted to try something completely different. So he started grilling hot dogs. And, despite his association with more sophisticated cuisine, he discovered that... More >>
• Best Macaroni & Cheese
  Café Trio
  Café Trio co-owner Chris Youngers plans someday to shrink the size of his restaurant's jumbo-sized bowl of "Mac Daddy," only because he thinks that some patrons are hesitant to order it if they see another customer's shock at the 2-pound mound of penne pasta baked with Fontina, whole-milk... More >>
• Best Burger
  Maxima'z Restaurant
  When Jerusalem-born Maher "Max" Eljergawi took over the whitewashed cottage at 18th Street and State Avenue (the former Westheight Coffee Shop) and turned it into a combination smoothie salon and burger palace, he thought he'd make his name selling four kinds of Philly cheesesteaks. But his... More >>
• Best French Fries
  RJ's Bob-Be-Que Shack
  Not every customer who comes into chef Robert Palmgren's barbecue shack wants seasoned fries (the waitresses almost always ask in advance, just in case), but the "secret seasonings" do add a nice punch to the thick, crunchy fries. Probably because the seasonings have more than a hint of... More >>
• Best Burnt Ends
  Fiorella's Jack Stack Barbecue
  The fall-apart tender burnt brisket ends at Fiorella's Jack Stack Barbecue are the restaurant's most popular dish. Folks there cook the brisket for six to eight hours before chopping off the ends and smoking them again for another hour or two. Beef ends are the top sellers, but the menu also... More >>
• Best Pulled Pork
  Oklahoma Joe's Barbecue
  Jeff Stehney, a former American Royal champion, engaged in a bit of counterprogramming when he opened his original Oklahoma Joe's restaurant in 1996. He set up inside a convenience store, yet another home of spinning-to-nowhere hot dogs. Stehney proceeded to sell so many meals that he was able... More >>
• Best Ribs
  L.C.'s Barbecue
  Trying to reduce its workforce in the mid-1980s, Farmland Industries offered early-retirement packages to some employees. For L.C. Richardson, a Mississippi-born company chef, the offer meant an opportunity to open a restaurant. Today, the vaultlike smoker behind the counter of the original... More >>
• Best Chips & Salsa
  Manny's
  The chips and salsa end up being half the meal at any Mexican restaurant, so they might as well be good. Too often, though, we're disappointed when even the most obscure, authentic Mexican joints bring out little baskets full of what seems like Tostitos. That doesn't stop us from loading up on... More >>
• Best Chicken Wings
  The Peanut
  Smothered in a tangy hot sauce, the slow-cooked chicken wings at The Peanut are a perfect blend of crunch and spice -- "You get flavor rather than heat," says one Peanut regular. The mutant-sized wings come by the dozen or the half-dozen, with a thick, homemade blue-cheese dressing for dipping.... More >>
• Best Dumplings
  Spicy Chili Pepper Wontons Blue Koi
  The oily little buggers named Spicy Chili Pepper Wontons might as well be called "hot, meaty wads of sex," but they come in a vegetarian option as well. The key is the sauce, swimming with chili, garlic and spices. The dumplings bob around in this greatness, coated by a crisp dusting of green... More >>
• Best Appetizer
  smoked salmon Rangoon at Red Snapper
  Imagine our surprise when we left the Midwest for New York, only to find that no Chinese restaurant there serves crab rangoon. We tried to explain it to our coastal friends: "It's like a fried wonton but with crab and cream cheese inside," we said. They looked at us with disdain. "That's... More >>
• Best Pizza
  Waldo Pizza
  Yes, there are snazzier pizza joints in town, and cheaper places, and places with more eclectic choices. But for a no-bullshit, no-fuss neighborhood pizza parlor, Phil Bourne's Waldo Pizza has it all over its competition. The 18-year-old pizzeria may lack ambience and can be noisy as hell, but... More >>
• Best Seafood Counter
  Whole Foods Market
  Overland Park's temple to all things organic and delicious, Whole Foods gives us the seafood we know and love: plump tuna steaks, soft-shell crabs, giant shrimp. We also admire the seafood selection we don't see at other counters: calamari, Cherrystone clams and whole red snapper. The people... More >>
• Best Aphrodisiac
  Fondue at the Melting Pot
  Skewered meats and cheese bubbling in fondue pots at the Melting Pot create a communal, intimate dining experience for couples who want to get to know each other better. "The smells, the aroma of the place when you walk in, the whole idea of being able to feed each other if you want -- it's just... More >>
• Best Kansas City Strip
  City Tavern
  The City Tavern, which is only a few blocks away from the venerable original Hereford House, isn't generally known as a steak joint -- and, frankly, there's not that much beef on the menu (just an 8-ounce filet, a 22-ounce ribeye and a 12-ounce Kansas City strip). But the strip, a slab of choice... More >>
• best No-Guilt Dessert
  Sugar-Free Pies at Sylvia's Deli
  Sylvia Raya opened her namesake deli at 17th Street and Washington in June 2004. We hit the place up for standard deli lunches like roast beef or turkey sandwiches, and Sylvia's occasional specials -- enchilada plates and, once in a while, meatloaf, green beans and mashed potatoes. Most of the... More >>
• Best Gelato
  Balsano's Gelato Café
  For the past year, Balsano's has been spooning up gelato -- a richer alternative to American ice cream -- in 35 flavors. Besides covering the chocolate spectrum, from choco-hazelnut to choco-butter-rum to choco-caramel, Balsano's also has candy mix-ins such as Butterfinger and cookies, and... More >>
• Best Expensive Dessert
  Hot Dessert Soufflés Morton's of Chicago, the Steakhouse
  At $14 each, the exquisite hot soufflés -- raspberry, lemon, chocolate or Grand Marnier -- at Morton's aren't outrageously expensive if they're shared by two people, which is typically what happens at the high-dollar steakhouse. "It's a very romantic dessert," says general manager Kelly... More >>