I'll admit to breaking down on occasion and burying my face in a plate of the nachos at Sol Cantina (pictured above). And you're not settling when you utter the words "nachos, please" for the BBQ nachos from Indios Carbonsitos. Natives are still trying to convince me that the (flat) nachos — flat corn tortilla, shredded cheese, taco sauce and jalapenos — at Taco Via are something special. But I'm not after emergency nachos. I'm in search of the city's best. Nacho cheese is not enough for your entry to be considered nachos. I'm looking at you, pocket burger from In A Tub. So denizens of cheese city, who has got the best nachos in town?
The first area location opened this summer in Overland Park at 7224 W. 135th St., and there's another in Lawrence (818 Massachusetts). The quick casual sandwich shop also serves pizza, soups and salads. The Pickleman's adjacent to the University of Missouri-Kansas City campus is open from 10 a.m. to 10 p.m. Sunday through Thursday and from 10 a.m. to midnight Friday and Saturday. You can order online.
Texas toast is a scourge - a doughy weight throwing off the entire meat-to-bun ratio of otherwise respectable sandwiches. But what about the Dead Texan at Swagger, some of you may cry through a chewy mouthful of the yeasty loaf. That grilled cheese-cheeseburger mash-up would be just as fine with thick slices of sourdough or potato bread. Texas toast is as adept as soaking up booze in one's system as an egg batter for French toast, but that doesn't mean we have to settle for the carb equivalent of a spatula. Especially in a town that does bread as well as Kansas City.
If you think you've got a sandwich that can shift my carb biases, I'm all for it. Until then, I'll root for the day when we can be free from the yoke of fat-fingered bakers.
Sometimes it feels like everybody associated with the Sprint Center has had a logic and coherency lobotomy. AEG CEO Tim Leiweke is one of these people. When Sprint Center was being built, he guaranteed that it would snag an anchor tenant in the form of an NBA or NHL team. "I can assure you, there is going to be an anchor tenant," he proclaimed to The Kansas City Star in 2004. Eight years later, it looks like he was blowing smoke up our collective civic ass.
The same week that the New York Islanders, long considered Kansas City's best hope to bring the NHL downtown, decided to move to Brooklyn, Leiweke gave an exclusive interview to KSHB Channel 41's Jack Harry. Hockey fans, basketball fans or those who believe that corporations working with cities should keep their promises will find the interview a real blood-boiler.
Hold on to your milkshakes, Kansas City, Justin Bieber is in town. And as Blanc Burgers + Bottles breathlessly reported on Facebook, the Biebs had a chicken caprese burger and truffle fries at the Plaza burger shop last night. It's just nice to see a kid eat his vegetables.
The best basketball player on the planet was in Kansas City Wednesday night. For nearly 30 minutes, LeBron James put on a show during the Miami Heat's preseason exhibition game against the Washington Wizards at the Sprint Center.
The Heat blew a 14-point halftime lead, letting the Wizards hang around in the third quarter before finally losing the lead in the fourth and, eventually, the game to a John Wall-less Wizards team.
Washington's anonymous bench mob of Martell Webster, Chris Singleton and Jannero Pargo toppled Miami's three kings. Webster scored 23 points in 23 minutes. Singleton threw down a few hammer jams on his way to 17 points. And Pargo dropped three 3-pointers on the way to 11 points and six assists.
But the 16,143 people inside Sprint didn't come to see the Wizards. They came to see the Heatles. They gasped when King James slid into a bank of photographers, and oohed and ahhed when James soared for a tip alley oop (assist to former Kansas Jayhawk Mario Chalmers). They roared when Chris Bosh took a sweet touch pass from James and threw down a two-handed monster jam. And they celebrated with every slick cut to the basket by D-Wade, who gave fans the most for their money, playing 33 minutes on his way to a fat stat line of 23 points, seven rebounds, two assists, a steal and a block. Wade's performance was good enough for player-of-the-game honors.
This is a dark time for those of us who follow hockey. If you haven't heard (and let's face it, that's fairly likely), the NHL has locked its players out, and the ugly labor dispute between the sides doesn't look like it's close to resolution. So, instead of numbing life's endless pain with three or four games on NHL Game Center Live each night, we're stuck feigning interest in commissioner Gary Bettman's buffoonery and longing for the star players as they light up European leagues. It's bleak.
But this week there was hockey news centered on something besides the lockout: The pitiful New York Islanders (you can think of them as the Royals of hockey, if that helps you get through a post about hockey) are leaving Long Island's Nassau County for the glitzy new Barclays Center in Brooklyn. This means one other thing: The team, which has been considered ripe for relocation for several years, is definitely not going to fill the puck-shaped hole in our heart.
More broadly, though, the Isles' decision to stay in the New York metro (and keep that sweet barge of cable revenue) means that the chances of Kansas City luring an NHL franchise to Sprint Center have likely vanished for good. During the giddy days during and after the Sprint Center was built, the Islanders' despised owner, Charles Wang, kicked Kansas City's tires. Or, as The New York Times put it, "Wang looked for leverage, even taking the Islanders to Kansas City, Mo. for an exhibition game."
Republican Senate candidate Todd Akin's now infamous "legitimate rape" comments have led to no shortage of outraged responses from just about anybody with access to a media soapbox. The latest to take on the moronic comments was Tina Fey, the star of NBC's 30 Rock (and my personal hero). Giving a speech at a gala Wednesday night at the Center for Reproductive Rights, Fey summarized what most sane people are thinking this election cycle: "And if I have to listen to one more gray-faced man with a $2 haircut explain to me what rape is, I'm going to lose my mind."
And there was this nugget in which she perfectly encapsulated what angry voters think of Akin: "Todd Akin... Oof... This guy." Indeed, Liz Lemon. Indeed.
(Check out a righteous GIF BuzzFeed put together after the jump.)
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