Food >>

• Best Server
  Richard Strong
  Five years ago, when Chris Youngers and Tai Nguyen bought Papagallo, the midtown restaurant that would become Café Trio, they inherited a tiny kitchen, a menu of Middle Eastern dishes and Richard Strong — the only waiter still working in the place. Strong became such an identifiable... More >>
• Best New Restaurant
  Extra Virgin
  The owners of Extra Virgin, James Beard-award-winning chef Michael Smith and his wife, Nancy, must have been looking into a crystal ball when they started planning the livelier, more casual and less expensive bistro for the space in the other half of the building it shares with the more formal... More >>
• Best Coffeehouse (2 Comments)
  Hi Hat Coffee
  The tiny brick cottage on State Line, just north of Shawnee Mission Parkway, is easy to miss. It doesn't have 20 bikes parked on the sidewalk or neon coffee-cup signs or a bevy of bearded hipsters smoking out front. Instead, from 7 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. Monday through Saturday, a handful of... More >>
• Best Bakery
  Jay WaLe's Bakery-Bistro
  Pastry chef Ellen Hume's little storefront restaurant and sweetshop is the closest thing to a Left Bank patisserie in Kansas City, Kansas — or just about anywhere else in the metro. Brazilian-born Hume named her bakery Jay WaLe after daughter Jacy, son Wagner and grandson Leonardo, but the... More >>
• Best Breakfast
  Kate's Kitchen
  When it comes to breakfast, the general consensus is that it's a lot more fun to eat in anyone's kitchen besides your own: There's a sense of luxury in having someone else pour your coffee, butter your toast and fry your eggs. That's the feeling at Kate's Kitchen, which First Watch veterans... More >>
• Best Brunch
  Café Europa
  The thing about brunch is this: It requires a little more glamour than breakfast. It can't be too noisy; there can't be too many children running around; alcohol must at least be an option; and the venue can't be too uptight and hoity-toity because customers need to be able to stumble in... More >>
• Best Burger
  The Well
  Kansas City has never been a town at a loss for a great burger. But the house hamburger at the Well scores as the best new burger in town. At their new sort-of-sports bar in Waldo, saloonkeepers Andy and Chris Lewellen have created a thing of beauty: an 8-ounce patty of fresh Angus beef, grilled... More >>
• Best Grilled Cheese
  You Say Tomato
  Although this cozy, clubby little café doesn't always have a grilled cheese listed on the handwritten menu board (which changes daily), the kitchen is always happy to whip one up: the kind that Mama used to make, with perfectly grilled, toasty buttered bread and gooey melted cheese.... More >>
• Best Tacos
  El Camino Real
  It's not because the authentic tacos served at this unassuming storefront cantina are inexpensive (they're $1.50 each) or that the selection — beef tongue, spicy chorizo, fish, fried fish, carne asada, poblano chile and cheese, chicken — is so interesting that El Camino Real is such... More >>
• Best Pizza (1 Comment)
  Spin! Neopolitan Pizza
  Because owners Gail and Richard Lozoff and partner Ed Brownell had such success with the suburban locations serving their hand-tossed, stone-fired pizzas, it made a lot of sense to bring the concept to midtown — even in a neighborhood with two other Italian restaurants and another... More >>
• Best Diner
  Neighbor's Café
  You simply have to love any small-town diner that serves the first cinnamon roll free. Extras are 50 cents each and worth every damn penny. Though it's not much to look at from the outside — inside either, for that matter — Neighbor's Cafe is an institution in downtown Lee's Summit;... More >>
• Best Cheap Food
  Mealio Dealio
  A cheap meal doesn't have to be defined as a low-budget buffet or a spin through a drive-up window; there are places where a hungry diner can get a bargain and a great dinner at the same time. That's the thinking behind the "Mealio Dealio" offered only on Sundays and Mondays at Houlihan's... More >>
• Best Sushi (3 Comments)
  Wa
  Kansas City has several exceptional sushi restaurants, but there's something eccentric and lovable about this Lawrence institution that takes dining to another level. You have to admire a sushi parlor that carefully stores the chopsticks of its favored clients in an ornate cabinet and offers a... More >>
• Best Ice Cream
  Poppy's Ice Cream and Coffee House
  Teresa Poppinga named her business after herself. Why shouldn't she? The young entrepreneur creates and sells some of the creamiest homemade ice creams and sorbets in town. In the shop's freezer case, we've seen such unusual flavors as cake batter, cinnamon bun, gianduja, lemon cookie, grapenuts... More >>
• Best Barbecue: North
  Smokin' Guns BBQ
  This little firecracker of a joint doesn't stay open too late. In fact, owners Phil and Linda Hopkins — the 1999 Grand Champion winners of the Jack Daniel's World Championship Invitational Barbecue Contest — stop serving at 6 p.m. But late eaters can stop by early for carryout... More >>
• Best Barbecue: South (1 Comment)
  Adam's Rib Original KC Barbeque
  Hope Loehr is a perfectionist, a quality not always seen in the operator of an independent barbecue pit. Since opening Adam's Rib last March, Loehr has insisted that her little restaurant — a former neighborhood saloon — stay impeccably clean (which may rub the wrong way some BBQ... More >>
• Best Barbecue: East
  Summit Hickory Pit BBQ
  There are two ways to judge the quality of a barbecue joint before you even walk into the building: (1) Does a rich, smoky fragrance waft through the air? (2) And is the parking lot filled with cars all day? By those criteria, the Summit Hickory Pit is a contender. The fast-growing hamlet of... More >>
• Best Barbecue: West (1 Comment)
  Woodyard Bar-B-Que
  Back at the turn of the last century, the Schloegel family sold coal for home heating stoves in Westport. By the 1950s, the family was selling wood — hickory, oak, apple and cherry — to the city's barbecue-pit owners out of a little frame house on Merriam Drive. The barbecue business... More >>
• Best Mexican Restaurant
  Fiesta Azteca
  Raytown, stereotyped as the essence of white, middle-class America, may seem an unlikely community to find a great Mexican restaurant, but Andres Orozco saw a niche and filled it. And then some: Fiesta Azteca's tiny dining room is nearly bursting with Mexican flags, streamers, banners, beer... More >>
• Best Indian Food
  Masalas Authentic Indian Diner
  No restaurant seems less like a diner than Masalas, which is indisputably the most glamorous Indian dining spot in the city. The elegant décor is one reason that this restaurant is different from most of its less-snazzy rivals, but the cuisine is more eclectic and varied, too. In addition... More >>
• Best Thai Food (1 Comment)
  Thai Orchid
  Yes, other Thai restaurants in Kansas City are bigger, prettier and feature a wider array of dishes and more elaborate bars. But at Thai Orchid, the lure is simply the food. A tropical orchid may be seductively fragrant, but the Thai Orchid is perfumed with the intoxicating scent of fresh... More >>
• Best Vegetarian Food
  Genghis Khan Mongolian Grill
  Some vegetarians won't dine in a restaurant that has animal flesh on the menu. Well, Genghis Khan does offer meat and seafood on the buffet line leading up to the communal grill, but for those diners who have a beef with beef — or anything else that once moved or wagged a tail — the... More >>
• Best Vietnamese Food
  Vietnam Café
  There are many reasons to love this intimate dining room: the pretty terrazzo floor and original pressed-tin ceiling, the attractive and attentive staff, the snappy timing of the kitchen crew, the big-bellied Buddha by the cash register. The primary reason that this Vietnamese venue is busy... More >>
• Best Italian Food
  The Copa Room
  Even die-hard midtowners who loved the classic Sicilian-American cuisine created by Kathy Fiorello for her son Carlo Cammisano's restaurant, the Copa Room, weren't thrilled with its location: an aging building (with limited parking) at 34th Street and Broadway. But when Carlo and his wife,... More >>
• Best Steakhouse
  Sullivan's Steakhouse
  Sullivan's Steakhouse, owned by the Wichita-based Del Frisco's Restaurant Group, describes its concept as "a 1940s Chicago-style steakhouse," though the Leawood location is closer in spirit to the Plaza's upscale Capital Grille than a brawny Windy City steak joint. But if you're going to pay... More >>
• Best Seafood
  Bristol Seafood Grill
  The Power & Light District's best restaurant is also its first one to actually have a connection to Kansas City. The Houlihan's Restaurant Group, the current owners of this restaurant concept (created by Joe Gilbert and Paul Robinson back when "fresh seafood" was considered an oxymoron in... More >>
• Best Romantic Restaurant
  Ophelia's
  Let's just say, hypothetically now, that you were considering having an extramarital affair. That's when most men and women start thinking about romantic restaurants because any secluded rendezvous spot — even a trashy all-you-can-eat buffet — is suddenly infused with a heightened... More >>
• Best Place to Eat at the Bar
  Mike & Charlie's
  The Italian cuisine at Mike & Charlie's restaurant in Harrah's Casino is good stuff: the best dishes from the culinary repertoire of local restaurateur Mike Garozzo and his St. Louis counterpart, Charlie Gitto. But the best deal in the house is the "Sicilian Sampler Bar Menu," served at the... More >>
• Best Late Night Food (1 Comment)
  The Marquee Bar & Grill at the AMC Mainstreet
  Over the last decade, the number of all-night joints in Kansas City — not that there ever were that many — have dwindled down to a precious few. Conversely, the number of drinking establishments and nightclubs has increased. So where are all the hungry, well-oiled partygoers supposed... More >>