The Pitch: Best of Kansas City 2014

2014 N i g h t & D ay

T H E

B O T T O M S

H I S T O R I C

W E S T

THANK YOU FOR WELCOMING

OUR NEW NATION B

O

UL

M

SEE YOU AGAIN NEXT JUNE E VA R D I A . C

O

BECAUSE YOU DESERVE

THE BEST! Market Station is your window to Kansas City. Wrapped in striking views of downtown and the Missouri River, and within walking distance to an eclectic menu of boutique shops, fine dining, and evening hot spots, this urban apartment community puts luxury at your door step and the city at your feet. Whether you are enjoying the day in the historic River Market or just relaxing at home, Market Station is the destination for savvy urban dwellers everywhere.

LIVE One and Two Bedroom Floor Plans Large Kitchen Islands Garden Style Tubs Spacious Walk-in Closets Washer & Dryer In Every Apartment Home Outdoor Living Space Pet Friendly WORK Easy Access To All Major Highways Close To Both Library and Financial Districts Convenient To KC Downtown Airport Minutes Away From the Garment District Cyber Lounge PLAY Free Parking Resort Style Pool with Hot Tub Billiards Lounge Fully Equipped Fitness Center with Strength Training Studio ENTERTAIN Outdoor Living Area featuring Grilling Stations, Flat Screen TV and Fireplace Just a Few Blocks From the Power & Light District Minutes From Westport & The Country Club Plaza 15 Minutes From Kauffman & Arrowhead Stadiums

8 7 7. 6 5 9. 2 2 5 3 240 W 2ND ST, KANSAS CITY, MO 64105

MARKETSTATIONAPTS.COM

RedBud • Paperbark & Crimson Sunset Maple • Swamp White Oak Ginkgo • Magnolia • River Birch • Serviceberry • Arborvitae • More!

Work Top Cooler • Meat Slicer • Fryers • Film Wrapper • Ovens Corner Drain Table • Ice Machine • Sinks • Fatique Mats • More!

2008 Chrysler Minivan • 2008 Chevy Aveo • 2002 Ford E-450 Box Electronic Trailer • Kenworth Dump • Mack Dump • More!

B e st of night

W

e are not morning people. Shut up — you aren’t, either. We like sunrises as much as the next Eagle Scout, we guess, but we prefer a sunset the color of a two-cherry Manhattan. We like Manhattans. We like a beer and a steak and a beer. We like to watch the sun go down behind the Kauffman Center for the Performing Arts. We like to watch early evening’s commuters look a moment at the Boulevard headquarters when it lights up. We like the blue glow of the Roasterie’s plane. We like to congratulate ourselves for doing what we set out to do today, give or take the grocery store and having to leave the Nelson-Atkins before we were ready. There’s tomorrow, too, and sometimes we like tomorrow better. We like to talk with our friends about where we might go for drinks, for dinner, for drinks again. We like plays. We like First Friday in the Crossroads and in the West Bottoms. We like club shows and dive bars. Some of us like our chances with someone we met tonight. Some of us like our chances with someone who keeps going home with us. We like that so much of what’s best to eat and drink and see and do and think about in the daytime can be done — sometimes better still — at night. We like night anywhere. But we love the nighttime most right here, when the best of Kansas City glows just right.

Contents fooD BArBeCue Drink

9A 24A 27A

Arts & entertAinment 41A Best of

Contributors art director: Jeremy Luther photographer: Chris Mullins Writers: Theresa Bembnister, Liz Cook, Jacob Corbin, Charles Ferruzza, Natalie Gallagher, David Hudnall, Deborah Hirsch, Angela Lutz, Ben Palosaari, Nancy Hull Rigdon, Abbie Stutzer, Steve Vockrodt proofreader: Brent Shepherd copy editor: Deborah Hirsch Managing editor: Justin Kendall editor: Scott Wilson

the Models: Verona Fink, Zeth McReynolds, Kelsey Wroten, Anna Svoboda-Stel

reADers’ ChoiCes PAge 39B

Wardrobe: Provided by Halls on Grand. chloe the pig: By special arrangement with Keith and Julie Towner.

z

z

P R I V A T E

and

E V E N T

D I N I N G

S P A C E

F rom

OKLAHOMA JOE’S

b a r -w b-que [ Next door to our Olathe restaurant ]

Q U a l I t Y S M O K E D M E at S

•

l I B at I O N S

w w w. t h e 18 0 r o o m . c o m

z 8A

the pitch

11944

South Strang Line Rd

Telephone

913.390.0180

O l at h E . K a N S a S . 6 6 0 2 6

best of kansas city 2014

night

pitch.com

z

best of kc

food 2014

Joe’s Downtown Donuts anD Coffee 641 Grand • 816-474-8000 joesdowntowndonuts.com

You listen for the sound of shoes walking away from the office doughnut table and then glide casually over and, after a tiptoe peek over nearby cubicle walls and a hungry pirouette to make sure that no witness sees you, lift the lid of the doughnut box and pick out the three doughnuts that your stupid Pavlov brain hasn’t let you stop hoping to eat since the doughnuts arrived this morning.

Take them. Go quickly back to your desk. You’ve won again. You are a ninja, a fat ninja, and you have a pink doughnut and a glazed devil’s-food doughnut and half of the last long john (you are a polite fat ninja). And it is now many hours until someone brings another doughnut box to work, so you type the word doughnut a lot in one paragraph because it might make the time go by faster until the doughnuts come back. Or until you go buy your own goddamn doughnuts from Joe’s, like a grownup with a job. That’s the place we’re talking about, a happy little annex of the Grand Slam liquor and conve-

nience store that opened this year to peddle doughnuts made very early each morning at Ray’s Donuts (315 Northeast Vivion Road in the Northland; same ownership). Sure, there’s a lot going on downtown, but the arrival of great doughnuts might be our favorite development of the year.

Schepmann’s European-style bake shop does. Holton shares baking duties with Julie Steele, and their output is impressive: The croissants are buttery and flaky, the savory cheese gougères are delectable (and particularly good with this venue’s housemade soups), the muffins tower over their rivals, and the pain au chocolat evokes a brisk Paris morning better than anything short of a page from Proust. Everything in the pastry cases and the bread basket is made from scratch, and the kitchen and retail spaces are so smartly decorated that Sasha’s looks like a stage set for a great bakery. After that first lemon macaron, you know it’s the real thing.

Best neW BAKeRY

o r Holt Carte

n , pas

try wiz

ard

b r o o k e va n d e v e r

Best Doughnuts

Best neW RestAuRAnt

Limestone Pizza kitChen Bar 814 Massachusetts, Lawrence 785-856-2825 • limestonepkb.com

sasha’s Baking Co. 105 West Ninth Street • 816-474-9935 sashasbakingco.com

A ny loc a l bra sser ie con nec ted with the ebullient Carter Holton — teacher, reality-TV star, pastry wizard, singer — seems preordained to soar. And so Jeremy and Michelle

Too many cooks may spoil the broth, but a trio of chef-owners clearly know what they’re doing in the exhibition kitchen of the six-month-old Limestone Pizza Kitchen Bar, a smart and sharply focused restaurant that is both accessible and upscale at once. It all works. The restaurant pitch.com

is the brainchild of Rick Martin, a veteran of Free State Brewery for two decades; Mikey Humphrey, former head baker at WheatFields Bakery Café; and founding WheatFields partner Charlie Rascoll. The chefs are creative, daring and a little control-freaky, making their own chili paste and ketchup. And their own pastrami and mozzarella.

And, uh, their own sauerkraut, sausage and pickles. Everything in the kitchen, they say, is regionally sourced, including the Kansas flour in the pizza crust. The airy, slightly chewy “neoprairie” pizzas are on a whole other plain, as it were, deserving a big win all by themselves. But there’s so much other food of consequence (but not of great expense) to discover here, including a few pasta choices, a succulent skirt steak with frites, salads, and deliciously imaginative desserts such as a crème caramel not much bigger than a checker. Game on.

Best InstAnt neIghBoRhooD CLAssIC

CuCina DeLLa ragazza 301 Westport Road • 816-960-4744 ragazzakc.com

Ten months af ter Laura Norris opened her tiny Italian delicatessen

best of kansas city 2014

night

the pitch

9A

INTRODUCING

Hand-Bottled and Individually-Capped Craft Cocktails The Only Place in Kansas City Creating Individual Serving Bottles of the New Craft Cocktails

THE ZEN OF GIN JUAREZ, MARGARITA PFG HIGHBALL SASSY’S CHAMPAGNE COCKTAIL Enjoy with the 3 Course, $25 “Dinner and a Show” Menu 5 Happy Hour Food Items for $4 (Mon – Fri, 4 – 6:30 p.m.)

BONUS FREE Valet Parking for Guests FREE Wi-Fi

View the full menus and all of the news at www.providence-kc.com 1329 Baltimore in the Hilton President Hotel Kansas City, MO 64105 (816) 303-1686 or www.providence-kc.com “Like” us on Facebook at facebook.com/ProvidenceKitch and follow on Twitter at @ProvidenceKitch.

! !

C K s e t o V e love you too h t or F s k We Than I BEST CHIL

A Local Legend since 1919, We are proud to be the longest family operated restaurant in KC.

All You Can Eat Tacos Everyday 9105 E US Highway 40 | Independence, MO 816.861.7309 | dixonschili.com |

10A

the pitch

best of kansas city 2014

night

1000 West 39th Street, Kansas City, MO 64111 Q39KC.com | 816.255.3753 pitch.com

best of kc 2014

Celebrating 27 years in business

food

angel a c. bond

and wine bar in Westport, the seventable bistro has become so popular that the reasons for its immediate success — a vital sense of conviviality, a cheery staff (actress Missy Koonce is often the weekend bartender), an uncomplicated selection of hearty Italian dishes — are also causing an enviable problem.

People who come to drink and dine at the restaurant frequently don’t want to leave. The tables don’t turn quickly, and at the end of the night, regulars seem all but ready to bed down here. Which means only that Norris has created a highly valuable rarity: a great neighborhood hangout. The food, which was just fine, has improved since chef Bob Smith took over the tiny kitchen, and the antipasti board is perfect

Key-lime-pie-o’clock at Upper Crust

with two glasses of wine (or one of Koonce’s elaborate cocktails).

The venue attracts performers and restaurateurs later in the night, so the intimate space’s allure takes on another dimension. It’s all so damn entertaining that you won’t want to leave, either.

BEST 10Th ANNIVERSARY

Bluestem 900 Westport Road • 816-561-1101 bluestemkc.com

When chefs Colby and Megan Garrelts opened a small, fine-dining bistro on the western end of Westport in 2004, their ambition seemed to outstrip what the neighborhood could accommodate. This corner had never been a serious dining destination, and the Garreltses, despite their credentials, were young upstarts. Flash-forward a decade, and Colby Garrelts is a James Beard winner, Bluestem (which has

doubled in size and recently completed an impressive renovation) is a smash, and their small dining empire keeps expanding. Rye has become the comfort-food capital of Leawood, and there’s talk of a future fast-casual concept with the barbecue giant Joe’s. At a time when formal dining is considered almost passé, the Garreltses focus on maintaining a distinctive style, a firm dignity and an absolutely enviable elegance. Their Bluestem is better than ever, and it was already great.

BEST 40Th ANNIVERSARY

the AmericAn restAurAnt 200 East 25th Street • 816-545-8001 theamericankc.com

When the Hall family constructed the complex we now know as Crown Center, they demanded a classy dining room that could rival any fourstar restaurant in the country. The American fit the bill from the start, with a sweepingly dramatic interior

by Warren Platner and a waitstaff that was so polished and formal that its work was as much high-toned performance as vital service. Over the past four decades, the restaurant has been home to an impressive array of James Beard Award–winning chefs, with a kitchen that has generally burnished that early cachet and sometimes exceeded the original lofty mandate. (The dining room, while still impressive, has a dated air, though a revamp is reportedly in the offing.) Today, Michael Corvino is the chef who oversees the kitchen, sending out plate after plate after plate of beautifully composed food.

The expensive but awe-inspiring tasting menus yield seven or more courses, presented to patrons with the solemnity of a Nobel Prize. It is a dining experience for neither every taste nor every wallet, but in terms of style, ambition and sheer taste, it is unmatched in this city.

Locally Grown, Locally Owned Your happiness is the sole focus of each of our restaurants.

Come in and be our guest. Enjoy a wonderful variety of food with influences from around the world.

Introducing Newport Grill, Paradise Diner and the reopening of Yaya’s Euro Bistro.

BEST hIddEN GEm

tropicAnA Multiple locations • paleteriastropicana.com

Tucked into a row of Latin restaurants, bakeries and grocery stores on Southwest Boulevard is Tropicana, an unhyped ice-cream and smoothie shop. Technically, Tropicana is a paleteria — a reference to the particular sweet it sells called a “paleta,” a type of fruit-and-ice-cream Popsicle native to Mexico. There are dozens of paletas to choose from at Tropicana,

5501 W 135th St. Overland Park, KS (913) 239-0807

5501 W 135th St. Overland Park, KS (913) 894-222

7021 W 135th St. Overland Park, KS (913) 345-1111

PB&J RestauRants Where You Are the Most IMportAnt IngredIent eatpbj.com pitch.com

best of kansas city 2014

night

the pitch

11A

E K A C E S E E H C In K.C.!

korean & japanses cuisine

The Best

r Cheescake We cook ou at low for 4 hours s with great temperature heesecake is care. Our C se but not rich and den it us soon is V t. too swee r the Best and discove K.C.! in e Cheesecak

t 87th Stree 12126 W. 262 -0 7 0 3 ) 3 1 • (9 Lenexa KS Mon-Fri: 7:00 am-6:00 pm Sat: 10:00 am-4:00 pm

pASTrIES - CHEESECAKES - dESSEr

TS

www.stjosephstablebakery.com

Featuring: Pasta Favorites • Blackened Seafoods • Cajun/Creole Delights

Become a Jazzaholic and join our monthly email club at kcmo.jazzkitchens.com

Midtown - 39th Street West 1823 W. 39th St., Kansas City, MO 816-531-5556

Legends Shopping Center 1859 Village W. Pkwy, Suite 102 Kansas City, KS 913-328-0003

www.jazzkitchen.com the pitch

best of kansas city 2014

night

{

Monday-Saturday: 6:30am-8pm Sunday: 6:30am-2:30pm

}

6740 W. 75th Street Overland Park, KS 66204 913.236.0003 cozyscafe.com

Fine Louisiana Cuisine

12A

Great American & European Dishes with Fresh Ingredients!

pitch.com

Voted Lawrence’s B es t S us hi 2 Years in a row!

Two locations in Lawrence 811 New Hampshire Street 785-856-tuna &

1730 W 23rd Street 785-842-tuna

best of kc 2014

food

Taproom & Restaurant in the heart of Kansas City’s Crossroads Arts District

angel a c. bond

4 201

Limestone Pizza Kitchen Bar achieves greatness.

28 day aged cuts in flavors you’ve imagined in your beach-vacation dreams: piña colada, kiwi, mango, fresh coconut and more.

You can find all of these flavors in Tropicana’s homemade ice cream, too, along with decadent creations like “chicle” (bubblegum), guanabana and rum raisin. For an easier to-go treat, the staff converts any combination of ice-cream flavors into a shake. If you want to be boring and healthy, Tropicana has an answer, too: a rotating selection of aguas frescas (fruit-flavored water that beats your Vitaminwater any day), made-to-order fruit-andvegetable juices, and “fruit cocktails” loaded with sliced exotic fruits and sprinkled with chile salt and lime.

The menu goes on from there, with churros, tamales and spicy elote. You could stop at Tropicana every day for a year and still not have tried all the possible flavor combinations, and the only thing that would suffer for it is your waistband.

Best Worth-the-Line experience

Cheese slipper saturdays — Fervere 1702 Summit • 816-842-7272 • fervere.com

On the few days a week when Fervere — bakery of breads dense and complex, breads simple and airy, breads altogether heavenly — opens its lone front door for retail business, the cheese slipper is usually near the top of our shopping list. It’s an elongated oval of beautiful ciabatta, with cheddar pieces baked inside and garlic-cheese curds over the top, so it is, justifiably, on everyone else’s shopping list, too. The politest West-Sider might throw a stick of Plugrá under your feet rather than let you near the last loaf. (Naturally, he’d help you up as soon as his transaction was complete. It’s the West Side.) And

at 6 p.m. on summer Saturdays, the stakes go way up. That’s when Fervere tops a fresh batch of them with ingredients — four different slippers, with various combinations of Crum’s heirloom tomatoes, Urbavore basil, Taleggio, fried shallots, brie, potatoes and more — and sells them for $8 apiece until they run out. That usually takes less than an hour, so the line forms around 5 and can span scores of hungry loiterers. The first time you join the queue, you think, “Come on. This isn’t Smorgasburg.” But try one (or all four) and you’ll be back the next week, a believer who has spent the previous six days asking strangers whether they’ve been to Fervere for cheese-slipper Saturday. That’s how good they are: You don’t just wait in line for them; you tell people who might get there ahead of you, so they don’t miss out.

Best restaurant For unruLy chiLdren

port Fonda 4141 Pennsylvania • 816-216-6462 portfondakc.com

The nearly ear-bleeding volume of Port Fonda’s music has one miraculous benefit: Obnoxious kids seemingly disappear. We entered the Mexican-food hot spot with a particularly rowdy toddler, one whose public yelling and thrashing tend to attract glares. However, due to decibels that require scream-talking, no one heard or noticed our child — a rare and pleasant dining experience that allowed us to relax and savor the delicious fried-avocado tacos and refreshing agave and lime margaritas. We spotted children at a few other tables, so perhaps the secret’s out. If only this Airstream food truck turned cult-following restaurant would build a playground.

Best patio

Wines, cocktails

aixois Bistro

74 taps

251 East 55th Street • 816-333-3305 aixois.com

For most of us, going to fancy restaurants is a form of escapism. We can’t afford to toss $100 at a dinner or $50 at a couple of rounds of drinks on anything resembling a regular basis.

So when we do, we want to feel like we’re really soaking up that luxury lifestyle, at least for the few hours we can afford it. A good (and not overly expensive) way to achieve that richperson endorphin drip is a meal or drinks on the patio at Aixois, on the northern edge of Brookside in the Crestwood Shops. The shrubbery that encloses the patio is beautifully manicured and low enough to give patrons a view of the Trolley Trail.

It’s an excellent venue for peoplewatching, and anecdotal experience indicates that it’s the preferred path for the city’s most physically attractive joggers. The real beauty of the Aixois patio, though, is that it’s there for Kansas Citians at the two most beautiful times of day. Early birds can start the morning with coffee, breakfast and the paper from 8 to 11 a.m. The rest of us will enjoy happyhour cocktails (we dig the French 75 — gin, lemon juice, sparkling wine) as the sun descends, or until we run out of cash — whichever comes first.

1610 Main Street KC, MO 64108

816.888.8800 antonskc.com

_____________________

Customers Appreciating Wild Ethnic Burritos _____________________ DINE-IN|CARRY-OUT|CATERING

Great Food at Fair Prices

_____________________

Best excuse to have pie For Lunch

Key lime pie at upper Crust pie BaKery 7943 Santa Fe Drive, Overland Park

_____________________

913-642-2999 • uppercrustpiebakery.com

Going to Upper Crust’s Overland Park location feels like visiting that friend pitch.com

816.612.8383

900 Swift Ave NKC, MO 64116

best of kansas city 2014

night

the pitch

13A

Thai Orchid r e s t a u r a n t Award Winning Authentic Thai Cuisine Serving Kansas City Since 1991

Featured on Man v. Food with adaM richMan

11610 Kaw Dr. Bonner Springs, Kansas

913.422.4210

Lunch: Mon-Sat 11am to 2:30pm Dinner: Mon-Thu 5pm to 9pm Fri & Sat 5 pm to 10 pm Closed Sundays

Visit us at:

papabobsbbq.com

6504 Martway St. Mission West Shopping Center www.thaiorchid.us 913-384-2800

3 for $30 PER PERSON

Three course fondue dinners designed by YOU

the official pizza of soccer - at the legends

LocaLLy owned & operated!

Sunday through Thursdays this fall when you mention this ad Dinners include choice of cheese fondue, any salad, and our Fondue by You entrée platter.

Design your entrée by choosing your three favorite items! Choose from our Pacific White Shrimp, Teriyaki Marinated Sirloin, Filet Mignon, Honey Orange Duck Breast, Sesame-crusted Ahi Tuna, Atlantic Salmon, Breast of Chicken, Andouille Sausage, and many more! Expires 11/26/2014

1713 village w. pkwy kansas city, ks chiusanospizza.com • 913.299.8787

Present this ad and receive 20% off any bottle of wine with 3-course purchase!

0

RESERVATIONS RECOMMENDED | (816) 931-6358 | 450 WARD PARKWAY, KANSAS CITY, MO 64112 | MELTINGPOT.COM *Offer is valid at this location only. Not valid with any other promotional offer, discount or dip certificate.

Substitutions may be available. See store for details or restrictions.

14A

the pitch

best of kansas city 2014

night

pitch.com

best of kc 2014

food

who believes most problems can be solved with cookies. Owned by two sisters schooled by their mother in the art of baking, the shop has a chic, feminine vibe, with red chandeliers and a sign in the restroom that advises, “Keep calm and find your Mr. Darcy.” Every last pie is ready for its Pinterest close-up. The lattice-top crusts burst with berries, and the meringues are gorgeously peaked and browned. It’s impossible to go wrong here, but the pale-green Key lime, smeared with whipped topping that has been adorned with lime zest, is our favorite. Rich, creamy and tart, with a perfectly flaky crust, it’s exactly what Jane Austen would want you to eat.

BEST SEE-AND-BE-SEEN WEEKEND BREAKFAST SPOT

San antonio CarniCeria y tortilleria 830 Kansas Avenue, Kansas City, Kansas 913-281-6433

“I used to come here so I wouldn’t see anyone I know,” one real-estate maven told us one day not long ago, sipping an ice-cold horchata in this butcher shop, tortilla factory and café. “But a lot of people have the same idea. I see everyone I know in here, pretending they don’t know anyone.” You might recognize the author or the heiress or the TV executive or the computer dynamo in here to grab breakfast in this unassuming neighborhood space, which opens every day at 6 a.m.

The 12 tables in the middle fill up fast with diners (mostly folks from the neighborhood, but a carousel of artists, writers and actors, too) sipping steaming bowls of headclearing menudo (offered only on weekends) or chewing delicious carnitas tacos. This might also be home to the best chile relleno burritos in town, and we’ve been known to order two tortas at a time — because no one will tell.

BEST CURE FOR THE SUNDAY BLUES

WeStport Flea Market 817 Westport Road • 816-931-1986 westportfleamarket.com

Let’s be honest: Xanax is the best cure for the Sunday blues. But when your prescription runs out and HBO proves too expensive to be the helpful distraction you used to count on, there’s still drinking. Which is why

we dig what Westport Flea Market is laying down on Sunday nights. Starting at 8 p.m., its much-lauded burgers are half-off, as are the beers. Save the salad and smoothie for Monday. Go to the Flea, have a few beers, eat that tasty half-pounder, and embrace the sleepy feeling that follows. Pay for your meal, feel good about the savings, then leave. Don’t go to another bar. Don’t get a Butterfinger Sonic Blast. Just go home and go to bed.

CraftnatBuerearl & allAngus beef burgers

BEST FRESH PASTA

Cupini’S 1809 Westport Road • 816-753-7662 cupinis.com

This family-owned business — offering both carryout foods and casual dine-in meals — sells products besides house-made pasta, including hot and cold panini, salads and delicious desserts. But the generous pasta plates are what bring us here most often, particularly the vibrant vegetable lasagna, and the lusciously tender ravioli — stuffed with sausage and fennel and draped in a sage cream and prosciutto sauce. A grande order of the mostaccioli Bolognese costs less than nine bucks, and you won’t be hungry again for hours and hours — until you remember that you have leftovers.

y

Mo nday Tu es day industry da

10% off wiTh id.

11635 Ash St, Leawood, KS & opening soon:

918 Massachusetts St, Lawrence, KS sun-Wed 11-10 / Thurs-Fri 11-12pm

BEST PizzA

CaFé europa 323 East 55th Street • 816-523-1212 cafeeuropakc.com

When you see our pick for 2014’s best new restaurant, you’ll understand that, not for the first time in recent years, we’re all about Neapolitanstyle pizza. In fact, we’re so hooked on what this kind of pie delivers when it’s done right — a bubbly, lightly charred, perfectly chewy crust given just enough sauce to impart a San Marzano tang and just enough cheese to elicit a small prayer of dairy thanks — that we often forgo the rest of Café Europa’s reliably excellent menu just to sit a spell with the pizza here. The oven at this place wasn’t built expressly for pizza, but it turns out a f lawless crust. And the toppings are always simple but well-considered. There’s generally a Margherita available (mozzarella, basil, tomato sauce), but whatever the day’s special pizza is — we like anything with gorgonzola and potato — get it. Don’t share it (despite its being an almost shareable 12 inches). Don’t waste time photographing it (despite its prettiness).

Thanks for naming us one of your favorite delicatessens!

Kansas City 3904 Bell St. Kansas City, MO 816-531-0550

Crown Center 2450 Grand St. Kansas City, MO 816-842-2211

Overland Park 7070 W. 105th St. Overland Park, KS 913-649-9000

Mission 6846 Johnson Dr. Mission, KS 913-432-0101

WWW.DBRONXKC.COM

pitch.com

best of kansas city 2014

night

the pitch

15A

10212 Pflumm, Lenexa

(913)492.2116

Pizza Man ago!

c i h C f o e t s a T A “Da Best Thin Crust Pizza you’ve ever had!”

Authentic Chicago Dog

Authentic Italian Beef

the Best MoM & PoP RestauRant P Place your holiday tamale to go orders now! p Also, authentic mexican chimeneas are back!

Like us!

1667 SUMMIT KANSAS CITY, MISSOURI | 816-471-0450

World Champion

Dine-In, Catering & Banquet Facilities Available!

Book your holiday party today!

1218 Swift Ave. North KC

COme See JaCkie vOTed One Of The beST ServerS in kanSaS CiTy

SmokinGunsBBQ.com • 816-221-2535 Hours: Monday - Thursday 10:00am - 8:00pm Friday & Saturday 10:00am - 10:00pm

Tue-SaT • 1018 u.S. 169 • SmiThville, mO 64089 • kozakslaketowngrill.com

Lunch - Happy Hour - Dinner

Absolutely the best steak in Kansas City

LEAWOOD

ZONA ROSA

5001 TOWN CENTER DR 8661 N. STODDARD AVE. 913-327-0800 816-584-9000

SHAWNEE INDEPENDENCE 17244 MIDLAND DR. 913-3268-8000

19721 E. JACKSON DR. 816-795-9200

816.221.5111 www.pierponts.com

LocAteD insiDe Union stAtion tinG ceLeBrA oUr 15 YeAr Y sAr AnniVer

16A

the pitch

best of kansas city 2014

night

pitch.com

best of kc 2014

food

Don’t order another one. Just kidding — two really aren’t out of the question.

Best tofu

Sama Zama 425 Westport Road • 816-756-3600 samakc.com

We went to Sama Zama for the noodles — ramen being too rare around here — but we returned for the tofu.

Two or three other places in town

restaurants after they get off work.)

The menu is about as authentic as you’ll find in the metro, offering traditional American-Asian standards but focusing more on regional Chinese soups, steaming clay-pot suppers (the curry beef brisket and tendon is particularly delicious), a wide array of seafood choices (try the deep-fried squid with spicy salt) and meatless offerings. The restaurant offers only beer and nonalcoholic beverages, so you’ll have to forgo a

Jerry’scafe

tuesday-sunday | 6aM tO 3pM 816.941.4055 1209 w 103rd st. kcMO

Breakfast & Lunch hOMe Of the

faMOus reuBen &

Giant pOrk

tenderLOin! Owned & Operated By

the jerry naster

former Owner of jerry’s woodsweather cafe

Affäre

a modern german restaurant SUNDAY BRUNCH 10am-2:30pm Endless Mimosas $10 LUNCH SPECIAL Monday-Friday 11:15am-3pm Three Courses $19

angel a c. bond

fresh, seasonal, contemporary, private room, courtyard, art gallery, intimate weddings and rehearsal dinners

1911 Main Street Kansas City, MO 64108 816.298.6182

816.931.2482

Cucina Della Ragazza gets its neighborhood. prepare their bean curd in careful accordance with the tofucratic oath (First, do no bland), but the stuff here isn’t just good. It is perfect. Soft but not mushy, each square conveys the seasonings of your chosen dish — the fire and the ginger — rather than letting the flavors in the noodles, broth and vegetables overwhelm or act as camouflage for flaccid curd bombs.

Yes, the udon and the ramen at Sama Zama can be had with a variety of flesh, but the bean curd is just as filling, and hardly just for vegetarians.

Best AsIAN

Jen JenS 9066 Metcalf, Overland Park 913-642-1838 • jenjensop.com

In a city dominated by the familiar — General Tso’s chicken, lo mein, kung pao beef — the unassuming Jen Jens, with its drab décor and a mostly un-Americanized menu, is a true rebel. Even the restaurant’s hours, from 5 p.m. to 1 a.m. Tuesday through Sunday, are unexpected.

(Naturally, the dining room is a favorite with employees of other Asian

fruity Boo Loo Bowl with your bowl of pork intestines with sour cabbage.

We don’t consider that anything but an advantage.

Best tACos

CoCoboloS 5621 West 135th Street, Overland Park 913-766-5000 • cocobolos.com

To refer to celebrity chef Michael Smith’s delectable stuffed tortillas as street tacos would be like calling Perrier Jouët champagne a sparkling grape juice. The taco selection at Smith’s upscale cantina draws obvious inspiration from the inexpensive tacos sold by local vendors and food trucks, but his are a lot more glamorous — as you’d expect. Also: delicious. Each of the five choices on the dinner menu — a selection of three costs $10 — is artistically composed, but we’re partial to the beef tongue, with its roasted jalapeños, cabbage slaw, pickled red onions and queso fresco. Then again, we’re not about to pass up the dazzlingly good mix of braised pork with chicharrones, fresh pineapple and queso. Suddenly, six for $20 sounds about right.

3756 Broadway Blvd | Kansas City, Missouri

www.chubbysonbroadway.com

bleuburgerkc.com

(816) 347-9393 320 SW Blue Pkwy Lees Summit, Missouri pitch.com

best of kansas city 2014

night

the pitch

17A

Overlooking the historic Independence Square, Ophelia's offers an infusion of cultural flavors in an eclectic American menu. The steaks, seafood, duck, and lamb are a few of our guest's favorite items. Layers of flavors contribute to all of the dishes we serve. You will find the atmosphere casual, yet romantic at the same time. Ophelia's in Independence is truly a gem off the beaten path.

201 N MAIN ST | INdepeNdeNce, MO 64050 | 816.461.4525

best of kc 2014

KC’s most wanted bbq

food

Best Kauffman stadium snacK

Nacho helmet Tradition demands that an evening at the K be accompanied by a lapful of something deliciously horrible: a footlong bratwurst, a chocolate malt eaten with the dubious help of that ridiculous little wooden paddle, something involving jalapeños. But there are now so many options at the stadium that deciding just what you’ll shovel into your mouth can be a puzzle. We make sure we’re covering all of our junk-food bases by going straight for the brisket-acho helmet. This impressive display of excess loads barbecue meat, queso dip, cheesy corn and beans atop the usual round tortilla chips and whatever loose nacho toppings you point at for inclusion. You are going to need a fork. You are going to need a life coach. And, yes, it all comes in a plastic souvenir Royals helmet, perfect for eating a whole box of cereal the next morning.

Best OniOn RinGs

the GreeN room 4010 Pennsylvania • 816-216-7682

sweet “Shanghai Bourbon,” and we pretty much adore them all on their own terms. Not satisfied with an already tongue-twisting array (“Sweet Thai,” “Voodoo,” “Durango”), coowner Eze Redwood is still experimenting with new sauces. He says his patrons prefer an extended flavor palette, and who are we to disagree?

“They can get wings in Buffalo sauce anywhere,” Redwood points out.

“But we have wings you’ve never seen before.” True! And once you’ve eaten a dozen honey-jalapeño wings, with some of this place’s super-rich macaroni and cheese, fried okra or long-simmered baked beans, you are not about to settle for Anchor Bar’s version again.

best of

readers’ choices

WE sinc SMO e 1992 THE KE G STUOFOD F

AVAILABLE AT:

• Green Acres Market • Whole Foods Market • Kansas Sample Store • Mother Nature’s Market • Nature’s Pantry • Hy-Vee Health Markets • Price Chopper- Liberty • Rally House Stores • McGongiles Market • Natural Grocers

by Vitamin Cottage

oR oNLiNe At:

Dinrer-iynO! UT! ca

catering!

1012 SE BluE Parkway lEE’S Summit, mO 64063 thESummithickOryPitBBq.cOm

(816) 246-4434

GracesBestCookies.com

Page 39b

greenroomkc.com

If we can all agree that beer-battered onion rings are the very best onion rings, it’s easy enough to take the next logical step: that batter made with Boulevard Brewing Co.’s malty, slightly hoppy-bitter farmhouse ale, Tank 7, makes for a transcendent onion ring. It absolutely does, and that’s just what goes on at the Green Room.

Here, the onion rings are light, crispy, golden bangles of crunchy nirvana — even better than the fries (which are also exceptional) — and such an asset to this saloon’s juicy burgers that it’s simply madness not to order them.

Best cHicKen WinGs

WiNGs café 516 Northwest Englewood Road 816-413-9464 • thewingscafe.com

If the sauces make the wings, then the two-year-old, family-owned Wings Café in Gladstone flies way ahead of its rivals. The chicken wings themselves are sumptuously meaty, lightly battered and expertly fried. Where things get interesting is with the house-made dry rub — the kicky “Slap Yo’ Mama” wings are like deep-fried crack — or any of the dozen sauces to be had.

They range from the traditionally hot, vinegary Buffalo-style to the candy-

Best itaLian Beef sandWicH

PreservatioN market 510 Westport Road • 816-531-2337 preservationmarket.com

It’s not unusual for a customer at the Preservation Market, the fancy beerand-sandwich shop inside Bridger’s Bottle Shop in Westport, to audibly complain that the saloon’s Italian beef sandwich is not a Chicago-style version of the icon. Well, OK, that’s true. The sandwich conjured up by chef-owner Alex Pope and his culinary team (chefs Andrew Heimburger and Devin Campbell) is instead, according to Pope, “my homage to the Italian steak sandwich as opposed to it being the real thing.” You can call it a tribute, but we just call it an improvement. Made with lean eye of round beef, house-made pepperoni, a house-pickled giardiniera, fresh basil, fried garlic and Fontina cheese, it is — like some of this city’s legendary Italian mobsters — complicated, richly dressed, vinegary and spicy. In fact, we should call it a KC-style Italian beef and leave it at that.

HOW ABOUT

LUNCH

F O R

HALF OFF ?

Stop by &

enjoy the

beSt Middle Eastern

&

Mediterranean

food in KanSaS City!

all you Can eat buffet & MaRKet

Jerusalem

Bakery

.com pitch.com

1404 Westport Rd, KCMo (816) 931-8575

best of kansas city 2014

night

the pitch

19A

BEST CHEAP BURGER

Sheridan’S Unforked 7337 West 119th Street, Overland Park 913-601-5403 • unforked.com

formerly known as lasala’s deli

Weekend SpecialS

Friday Spiced

Saturday homemade

Shrimp Boil Fried chicken mon-Thurs 10am-4pm - fri-saT 10am-1am - sun 11am-7pm open laTe on game days!

910 e. 5th St kanSaS city, mo 64106 816.421.2189

There’s something about sitting down to eat something labeled a “pure burger w ith cheese” that makes it sound like the fast-food equivalent of some fiber-rich power bar. Oh, no, you think, this is going to taste healthy. At Sheridan’s Unforked, though, healthy means delicious. Restaurateur Jim Sheridan (the man who gave the metro its great frozen-custard dynasty) here gives us a $5 cheeseburger made w it h Nat u reSou rce beef, raised without growth hormones

let mignon. We find this burger juicy and loaded with flavor, and though you can order it with basic cheddar or even American, we ask for it topped with something adventurous from the cheese plate.

BEST STEAK

The capiTal Grille 4740 Jefferson • 816-531-8345 thecapitalgrille.com

It remains true that you should arrive at the Plaza’s outpost of this pricey steakhouse chain with a healthy checking account and a hearty appetite, in that order. But it also remains the case that the beef here is worth it: succulent and dry-aged in-

André’s has a happy hour?

angel a c. bond

Sweet!

Rye’s pies caught our eyes.

Introducing André’s new

Coffee & Wine Bar Cafe

and antibiotics, and dresses it with fresh tomato and greens to make it one of the best-tasting grilled burgers in the city. What makes it so good? It still tastes like a juicy, messy, off-the-greasy-flattop diner burger of the variety that is decidedly not good for you. Only here, it’s pretty much guilt-free, making it the perfect sin.

South Plaza

Your new favorite stop from 7 to 7 M–Th. & 7 to 9 F-S Espresso and pastry before work. A sandwich and beer at noon. Wine and cheese plate before hitting the town. And don’t forget chocolates or dessert for later.

BEST FANCY BURGER

The MajeSTic reSTaUranT 931 Broadway • 816-221-1888 majestickc.com

It’s not what you put on a burger that separates haute cuisine from hoi polloi feed. It’s what’s in the burger. In the case of this downtown steak venue’s patty, what’s in the burger are trimmings from hand-cut strips and tenderloins. The $10 burger is always grilled precisely to order, with the same attention to detail that the kitchen crew gives to a rib-eye or a fi-

Plaza store Grand Opening Oct.18th Serving:

20A

the pitch

best of kansas city 2014

night

pitch.com

house, with nearly every cut a winner. What puts our bankers on high alert, though, is the 24-ounce porterhouse, a sensational slab of prime that has been seared in the kitchen’s infrared broilers and is still sizzling when it’s delivered to the table. At $49, with no side dishes included, it is for most of us a head-shaking indulgence. But when you’ve been dreaming about a perfect porterhouse, nothing less will do.

BEST STEAK-DINNER DEAL

cenTer-cUT fileT coMbo j. GilberT’S Wood-fired STeakS & Seafood 8901 Metcalf, Overland Park 913-642-8070 • jgilberts.com

For $39, the briskly efficient waitstaff at J. Gilbert’s brings you a 6-ounce, center-cut vision of mesquite-grilled USDA Prime aged Angus beef, topped with a choice of seared scallops, a lump crab cake

best of kc 2014

food

or bourbon-maple shrimp. Oh, and you get two generous side dishes (choose from 10 options, including a salt-baked potato, grilled asparagus and wild-mushroom risotto).

Desserts, including a sensational seven-layer coconut cake, are left out of th is happy package, but you’ll probably be too full to contemplate one anyway.

pies are always featured on the dessert menu, sometimes alongside the rich Mokan nut or the sugar cream or coconut cream. And, oh, that coconut cream; if you see it on the menu, order a slice. No, make it two.

Best Cheese Plate

913-384-5998 • cafeprovencekc.com

Ça Va 4149 Pennsylvania • 816-255-3934 cavakc.com

There are two things you must do when you visit this dreamy Westport drinking spot. Obviously, you should try something from the marvelous champagne selection. But you absolutely cannot leave until you have ordered Ça Va’s cheese plate. At $12 and featuring a generous handful of carefully chosen cheeses, fresh Farm to Market bread, seasonal fruits and inventive house-made jams, this cheese plate is nothing short of transcendent. A recent visit found us salivating over Chabrin, a firm French goat’s milk cheese; a decadent aged gouda; the house-whipped brie torte specked with dried fruit and nuts; Fromager d’Affinois, a brielike sheep’s milk cheese; a buttery, true blue cheese from a local farm; a creamy dollop of chevre; and a spiced ginger-shallot spread. And chef Brandon Phillips does not skimp on these portions: The small tablet on which this collection is presented is crowded with piles of gourmet love. This plate is an emotional experience, one you want to have over and over again.

Best PIes

Rye 10551 Mission, Leawood 913-642-5800 • ryekc.com

Don’t try to make Megan Garrelts — coowner of Rye and the restaurant’s pastry chef — feel guilty about the lard in her pie crust. That’s just how she does pie, and we wouldn’t have it any other way when the crust (half butter, half lard) comes out so gloriously flaky. “I was a little worried about that in the beginning,” Garrelts says. “But we’ve only had a few complaints from vegetarians. They can be a little cranky, but we’re not changing the recipe. They can order something else.” The pies really are extraordinary, particularly her sweet and tart lemon meringue and the soothing banana cream. Those

Best DesseRts

Café PRoVenCe 3936 West 69th Terrace, Prairie Village

Let’s start with this French restaurant’s hot, f luffy, sweet souff lé, a labor-intensive creation that chefs Daniel and Philip Quillec offer just one night a week (Monday). Choose chocolate or Grand Marnier and order before you make your entrée selection, then put the thought out of mind until the perfect dish arrives.

Too full for the signature dessert?

Go smaller with confidence because Café Provence makes all of its exceptionally fine pastries in-house. The fall selection includes a pumpkin pot de crème with candied butternut squash; the popular tarte tatin, with house-made vanilla-bean ice cream; a tartelette au caramel with sea salt and star-anise creme fraîche; and peaches poached in cognac and apple cider served atop a Breton pastry with almond crème. Oui, oui, oui.

It’s all so seductive that you might consider a Provence dinner lighter than, say, your usual filet mignon au poivre. But no. Having both is, as they say in France, un dîner parfait.

Let’s Spoon!

A fall favorite is back! Come in today for a Pumpkin Pie Concrete!

Fresh vanilla frozen custard blended with a whole slice of pumpkin pie!

Best PlaCe tO DINe aFteR MIDNIGht

iPho ToweR VieTnamesefRenCh BisTRo 3623 Broadway • 816-531-2353 iphotower.com

The culinary possibilities for dining in Kansas City after midnight aren’t scant — if you count fastfood drive-thrus, saloon menus and badly lighted diners. Food of appreciable quality is a somewhat different story. That’s what makes restaurateur Spike Nguyen’s iPho Tower — a multihued, theatrical venue that this year started serving Vietnamese dishes inspired by the French occupation of that country (1887–1954) — the wild card of the late-night scene. Nguyen’s kitchen stays open until well past 1 a.m., serving small plates (friedshrimp rolls, fried sweet-potatoand-shrimp fritters, dumplings), banh mi sandwiches, pho bowls

GROW • BUY • EAT • LOCAL! pitch.com

best of kansas city 2014

night

the pitch

21A

Voted best

The Perfect Spot for: The Plaza Lights Holiday Parties and Dinners New Year’s Eve 816.561.1800 grandstreetcafe.com 4740 Grand, Kansas City, MO

8686 E 63rd St Kansas City, MO 816.358.8100

6441 Troost Ave Kansas City, MO 816.444.6006

korean 3 yearS

reStaurant in a row!

Thanks kC for all The supporT!

7800 Shawnee MiSSion Parkway 913.384.1688 • sobahnkc.com

ld M~exico in KC A little bit of~siO nce 1949

Best Breakfast in Missouri Everyday With Rachael Ray

Best of KC Winner Best Fried Chicken - 2012

www.loscorrals.com Breakfast , Lunch & Dinner

Downtown 408 W 9th St KCMO 816-421-9440

Northland 6024 NE Antioch Rd Gladstone 816-569-5844

Stop by & enjoy the

beSt

Middle Eastern

&

Mediterranean food

in KanSaS City!

Thank you KC, for supporting our restaurant and food truck to serve the best middle eastern food in KC! the food truck is available for all occasions! for reservation call 816-756-2770

431 Westport Rd, Kansas City Mo • 816-756-2770

22A

the pitch

best of kansas city 2014

night

pitch.com

best of kc 2014

food

and full meals. Want a French Indochina–style beef stew, a luscious grilled salmon or the marinated “shaken beef” on your way home from a show? Here you go. Need a show after your show? Listen to the high-volume Asian karaoke going on in the back room. Denny’s? What the fuck is Denny’s?

BEST LATE-NIGHT BARGAIN

Westport Café & Bar 419 Westport Road • 816-931-4740 westportcafeandbar.com

After 10 p.m., the number of Kansas City establishments that will serve you a well-prepared meal dips dramatically. Our preferred exception is Westport Café & Bar. Because of its f lavorful dishes, progressive cocktails and casually French atmosphere, it’s already one of our favorite spots in town. But we love it a little more after 10 p.m. From then until closing time, at 1:30 a.m., a plate of steak frites (a smallish cut, but still: steak) can be had for $10. A bowl of succulent spring-pea ravioli (a customer favorite) goes for half that, as do select glasses of wine.

Broke dudes seeking a classy date on the cheap: You’re welcome. Although it’s on you to come up with a reason that dinner has been pushed back three hours.

BEST SERVICE

MiChael sMith restaurant 1900 Main • 816-842-2202 michaelsmithkc.com

Aw a r d - w i n n i n g c h e f M i c h a e l Smith doesn’t shy away from being a perfectionist, and he demands that service in his namesake restaurant be as polished and memorable as his cuisine. It helps that his w ife, Nancy Smith, oversees the front of the house and trains the serving staff herself. “It’s all about communication,” she says.

“O u r s e r ve r s a re a n e x te n sion of Michael and have to transmit his passion about his food to our c u stomer s. It ’s a n a r t, but ou r staff gets it. We’ve had very little turnover since we opened.” She’s right. Service in the Michael Smith restaurant is formal but not stuffy or snooty, allow ing a dining experience that’s both hype-worthy and down-to-earth friendly.

BEST SERVER

anthony ValdiVia Jasper’s restaurant 1201 West 103rd Street 816-941-6600 • jasperskc.com

Name the one local server who keeps a stash of black napkins on hand for a special customer who likes to wear white dresses and prefers not to use white napkins. The same server keeps a little book listing the requests of his longtime call customers (the woman who prefers oranges to lemons in her iced tea, the patron who doesn’t like his soup too hot). That server is Anthony Valdivia, the 10-year veteran and headwaiter at Jasper’s. “He anticipates the needs of his customers like no server I’ve ever seen,” says co-owner Jasper Mirabile Jr. Valdivia’s station is always completely booked on weekend nights by customers who insist on his presence and will accept no substitute. A fledgling server should watch Valdivia to see a real pro in action. He’s attentive without being obtrusive and has that distinctive sixth sense, which tells him what a customer needs long before the diner realizes it herself. Because serving is not a job but an art form, and Anthony Valdivia is something like Kansas City’s Tintoretto.

“KANSAS CITY’S ~ The Pitch

SEXIEST

THAI FOOD”

Open Tues-sun

Daily Lunch Specials, Delicious Dinners 7809 Quivira Lenexa, Ks 66214

www.sweetsiam.com | 913.322.7285

Find us on Facebook facebook.com/thewestsidelocal

BEST CHEF

Carl thorne-thoMsen story 3931 West 69th Terrace, Prairie Village 913-236-9955 • storykc.com

Long before reality TV made restaurant chefs into rock stars, a lot of chefs — even local ones — lived like rock stars. And all of those late hours and all of that high intensity could lead to dangerously larger-than-life behavior. By that standard, quiet Carl Thorne-Thomsen, the executive chef and co-owner of the intimate Story restaurant in Prairie Village, is no Keith Richards. Rather, he’s the Henry David Thoreau of the culinary world. Before stepping into the kitchen full time, Thorne-Thomsen was a creative-writing student in Wichita State University’s MFA program. The thoughtful perfectionist (who was voted Food & Wine’s “People’s Best New Chef 2014” earlier this year) is committed to the quality of his restaurant’s stylish cuisine without indulging in theatrics or chasing the media spotlight. At Story, Thorne-Thomsen keeps his food center stage. And for the last three years, it has put on quite a show. pitch.com

best of kansas city 2014

night

the pitch

23A

best of kc

barbecue 2014

BEST NEW BARBECUE RESTAURANT

angel a c. bond

Q39

1000 West 39th Street • 816-255-3753 q39kc.com

The past five years have brought an onslaught of barbecue restaurants opened by competitors who have conquered the smoke-and-brisket circuit. Those ranks this year added Rob Megee, a graduate of the Culinary Institute of America and a veteran of the hotel dining business, including stints for Hilton and Westin. He wanted his own place, and he spent a small fortune turning a decrepit Chinese buffet into a sleek altar to barbecue. The dishes that won him a slew of shiny trophies 24A

the pitch

— they’re on display in the dining room — are all here, including excellent apple-brined pulled pork, sumptuous honey-glazed spare ribs and a truly great brisket. (We’re also partial to his house-made chipotle sausage.) The three house-made sauces are disarmingly fine. On every visit, we find ourselves getting a little more greedy with them, slathering the burnt ends (which are cut on the bias and not clunky, hard cubes). But down-home this ain’t. If there’s another smoke shack in the city where you can eat a hefty combo platter with a side dish of Frenchinspired white-bean cassoulet, we haven’t been there. (And we’ve been everywhere.)

BEST BARBECUE CHICKEN

Fiorella’s Jack stack BarBecue Multiple locations • jackstackbbq.com

There’s almost nothing better than a plump, juicy chicken breast, slowsmoked over wood and brushed with a piquant barbecue sauce. But restaurateur Jack Fiorella does it a little differently, serving both a traditional smoked chicken and a wood-fired bird lovingly marinated in fresh lemons and rosemary. It doesn’t require a sauce at all, al-

best of kansas city 2014

night

pitch.com

though it’s still pretty tasty with a dollop of Fiorella’s original on the side — and a big helping of cheesy corn bake.

BEST PUllEd PoRK

slap’s BBQ 553 Central Avenue, Kansas CIty, Kansas 913-213-3736

Slap’s BBQ opens six days a week at 11 a.m., and if you aren’t one of the dozens of dedicated meat eaters waiting in line a half-hour before the doors are unlocked, there’s a decent chance you won’t get to try your first choice cut (or anything at all). Slap’s — an acronym for, fittingly, Squeal Like a Pig — does everything well, from its stunning brisket down to its tangy, brown-sugar-and-spice sauce.

But the standout here is the heartstopping pulled pork. Whether you want it stuffed between a fresh bun (you can get a “regular” or a “large” sandwich) or just piled on a plate in its purest form, there’s no denying the absolute decadence of these supple, chewy tendrils. Soft as a pillow, each juicy, gorgeous mouthful sends you into fits of joy. It creates in you such feelings of ardor once you have tasted the pulled pork, you’ll want to ignore everything else on the Slap’s menu — but you shouldn’t.

BEST BURNT ENdS

plowBoys BarBeQue 3111 Southwest Missouri 7, Blue Springs 816-228-7569 • plowboysbbq.com

If you make the trip to Todd Johns’ year-old Plowboys Barbecue in Blue Springs, order the “Royal Crown” platter. This is your passport to the best meats — ribs, pulled pork and burnt ends — in Johns’ arsenal. This is a man who knows how to smoke meat, as he proved in 2009, when he was named American Royal Invitational grand champion. We say the king among these meats is Johns’ burnt ends: craveable, tender chunks of brisket that are a little crispy on the outside and tender on the inside. We can’t help but plow through an order fast. Before the last bite, we’re already planning our next trip to Blue Springs.

BEST BRISKET

lc’s Bar-B-Q 5800 Blue Parkway • 816-923-4484

It’s easy to smoke a pork shoulder.

That cut lends itself to a wide margin of error. But brisket requires precision — more than some barbecue joints can manage. If you don’t smoke it long enough, you get a gummy-textured meat. Cook it too long and it’s punishingly dry.

Prepare it just right, though, and you’ve probably ordered it from LC’s. The fog that comes out of the restaurant’s smokestack is a reliable enticement to stop for a plate of meat on your way to the Truman Sports Complex — or wherever. With this fine, smoky beef brisket, barbecue sauce becomes an unnecessary garnish. Bonus: The joint’s sandwiches are monstrous.

Best RiBs

OklahOma JOe’s Bar-B-Que (JOe’s kansas City)

sweet melange of molasses, brown sugar, barbecue sauce and chunks of mushy beans. Elsewhere, the beans are too hard and the sauce somewhat runny. Woodyard BBQ — a place that can strike a visitor as an old country home that accidentally became a barbecue joint — reaches a perfectly tasty compromise between the two bakedbean extremes. All in all, its beans aren’t too sweet, and pieces of brisket complement the thick but not cementlike texture of the dish. Woodyard’s beans are always a safe bet.

OWN

BAR-B-Q

Best side dish

gatesbbq.com

Kansas • 913-722-3366

maCarOni and Cheese Big grill & mOre

oklahomajoesbbq.com

501 North Sixth Street, Kansas City Kansas

We’re picky about our ribs. Try as we might this year to find a rib better than the soon-to-be-former Oklahoma Joe’s, we just couldn’t do it.

The ribs at Joe’s Kansas City are dependable, mouthwatering hunks of meat that never, ever fail to satisfy.

And we’re telling you again: Call ahead to avoid the line. Order a full slab and a sack of fries. And though these aren’t ribs you have to slather in sauce, fill up a few cups anyway, and don’t forget a handful of napkins. The name may be changing,

The Dantzler family knows that its side dishes are as important to the barbecue experience as the smoked ribs, beef, turkey and sausage sold in its five-year-old Wyandotte County location (which also serves up a full breakfast menu, thick burgers, hot dogs and fried pork tenderloins). We like the meaty baked beans and the slaw, of course, but for us, nothing comes before the creamy mac and cheese. This is home-style in the best way — the way you probably

3002 West 47th Avenue, Kansas City,

Kansas City’s

BurgerOCT

913-371-0088

Week

Sample Some of

KC’s Best Burgers

20-26 only $

5!

C OMpetitiO n L eveL BBQ

chris mullins

2009 American Royal Invitational Grand Champion

The burnt ends shine on Plowboys’ Royal Crown. but the food here remains — thank God — absolutely constant.

Best Baked Beans

WOOdyard BBQ 3001 Merriam Lane, Kansas City, Kansas 913-362-8000 • woodyardbbq.com

Baked beans can be a roll of the dice for barbecue enthusiasts. Sometimes the outcome turns out to be an overly

do it, only better. “We start with a box mix,” Jerri Dantzler says, “but we add a lot of stuff to it to make it taste like our own. And that means a lot of cheese.” It’s a fine, rich dish that more than holds its own among the daily specials here. If you haven’t eaten a platter of smoked chicken wings and a helping of this stuff at Big Grill, you’ve missed one of the metro’s true pleasures.

Dine In - Take Out - Drive Thru

Coming Sowoontonwton

D n KC at Tow Pavilion

pitch.com

best of kansas city 2014

3111 SW MO 7 Blue Springs, MO 816.228.7569 plowboysbbq.com

night

the pitch

25A

best of kc

DRINk 2014

Best New Bar

Julep 4141 Pennsylvania • 816-216-7000 julepkc.com

Rarely have we been wowed by a bit of interior bar design the way we were the first time we walked through the doors at Julep and laid eyes on what co-owner Beau Williams calls “the beast”: five 20-foot rows of beautiful bar shelving that stretch to the ceiling and contain something on the order of 300 bottles of liquor. It is a majestic and commanding sight, a testament to the alluring power of luxury alcohol. But our fondness for this freshly minted Westport bar — opened in April by Williams and his wife, Keely Edgington — goes beyond the visual. We dig the artful cocktails, which are on the short list of the city’s finest. We like the high-low mix of fancy whiskeys, which cost as much as a haircut, alongside $2 cans of Hamm’s. And we’re thrilled to have a first-class gin joint, right in the heart of Westport, to impress visitors from the coasts.

Best sports Bar

Westport Ale House 4128 Broadway • 816-756-5277 westportalehouse.com

After a few years of watching sales at their Plaza pizza-and-wine bar Coal Vines drop during Chiefs, Tigers and Jayhawks games, co-owners Bret

Springs and Zach Marten decided it might be a good idea to open a sportsfriendly restaurant. They chose an unlikely space to do it: 4128 Broadway, formerly home to Streetside Records.

We have somewhat proprietary feelings about that location, as our publication was founded in the basement in 1980 when it was called PennyLane Records.

A sports bar? In the sacred birthplace of our alternative weekly? But we have no beef with Westport Ale House, which opened in March and has been drawing massive weekend crowds ever since.

Springs calls it a “sports bar with an elevated atmosphere,” and we concur.

The menu goes well beyond nachos and wings (although the wings are pretty damn good), and there are 20 beer taps, a zillion huge TVs, and plenty of people to high-five after a score. If our former home had to become a sports bar, we’re glad it’s this one.

Best Bar sCeNe

strAWberry Hill After visiting other, older American cities, we sometimes lament KCMO’s lack of neighborhood street-corner bars. Mostly the nightlife here happens in nightlife districts — Westport, the P&L District, the Plaza, Waldo — and on busy commercial streets. It’s rare to stumble upon a bar in the middle of a residential neighborhood. Except across State

Line Road in KCK. We’ve found our nightlife compass increasingly pointing toward what we’ll loosely call the Strawberry Hill neighborhood. Within about a square mile, you’ve got Johnnie’s on Seventh, Chicago’s, the 403 Club (which moved a few blocks south this year), Barcadia (in the old 403 Club space), Breit’s Stein and Deli, and Fat Cat’s Vortex (formerly Fat Matt’s Vortex; life in KCK can be confusing). At all of these joints, you can find cheap drinks, interesting history and good conversation. Just mind your manners. KCK doesn’t mess around.

Best Bar we take for GraNted

403 Club 614 Reynolds, Kansas City, Kansas 913-499-8392 • 403club.com

This last-chance dive — with its shaded windows that all but completely shut out any signs of an outside world — almost feels like your last-ever opportunity for a libation.

Good thing it’s well-stocked with a surprising breadth of craft taps and bottles (and, of course, the usual selection of lowbrow well booze). There’s enough floor space inside the 403 Club, and outside on the shady patio, to house a small church bazaar — you know, if you wanted to do away with the seven pinball machines lining the pitch.com

walls, the pool table, the TVs running marathons of The Good Wife, and the jukebox loudly blasting Kiss. Those things are what make us take the 403 Club a little bit for granted. You can walk in on any night of the week, sidle up to the bar, befriend one of the regulars and have yourself a better time than you ever would have expected.

Honestly, if this bar really were your last stop, you couldn’t ask for more.

Best NeIGHBorHood Bar

CHez CHArlie 3809 Broadway • 816-753-9247

Midtown is less a neighborhood than it is an amorphous zone, its boundaries highly debatable. But there are certain types that populate and represent the neighborhood. KCAI grads, service-industry folks, dudes in bands, chicks with parts of their hair buzzed, Bukowski-like old guys, heavily tattooed people, marginalized artists, marginalized drunks.

Our people. They all hang at the best bar in midtown: Chez Charlie. A sort of Cheers for the creative community, the unmarked dive has a cozy, seedy charm that would be impossible to manufacture. Everything about Chez — the old men’s Thursday-night dart league, the Crock-Pot on Sunday afternoons, the spontaneous Friday-night dance parties — is set at a perfect low-key level. Perfect

best of kansas city 2014

night

the pitch

27A

Crafted Locally, Awarded Globally

Clean Finish, Uncommon Clarity.

INTRODUCING DIZZY THREE AIR-ROASTED ESPRESSO FLAVORED VODKA, the new awardwinning vodka with a bold, coffee-forward flavor unlike anything you’ve tried. Enjoy it as a shot or in mixed drinks such as chocolate or espresso martinis.

Good Spirits Distilling, LLC. Olathe, KS

www.clear10.com www.Clear10.com

GOOD SPIRITS DISTILLING, OLATHE, KS

28A

the pitch

best of kansas city 2014

night

pitch.com

best of kc 2014

drink

for a quick one before a show, perfect for an all-night gathering, perfect for a nightcap — we can’t imagine life in KC without Chez.

details like that (and the gorgeous amber lighting) that make the Ship one of our favorite places to anchor down, set sail, climb aboard — you get the idea.

Best 3 a.m. Bar

Best Cheap date with your thirsty self

MiniBar 3810 Broadway • 816-326-8281

Dave’S STagecoach inn

minibarkc.com

316 Westport Road • 816-561-2492

Where are you going to go when most of the other bars are shutting down and you need one more drink? or food? or some reliable tunes on a weeknight? In all of these cases, MiniBar is the answer. The little sister to RecordBar is like a catchall neighborhood bar. Not really a dive — sure, some of the seat cushions could be replaced, and there is the faint smell of cheap alcohol and regret — MiniBar has a cut-above-average beer selection, and the bartenders are both able and happy to whip up something beyond your run-of-themill vodka-soda. (Our Best Crushworthy Bartender, Clarence Draper, mans the deck a couple of nights a week.) Seldom is a night unclaimed at MiniBar with the live acts (both local and touring), the DJ residencies and regular events such as karaoke (Tuesdays) and Nerd Night (the third Wednesday of the month). And there’s never a cover. Frozen pizzas are available whenever you decide it’s time to eat. So, yeah, MiniBar is the answer. The question is irrelevant as long as the night ends here.

Dave’s Stagecoach runs some terrific drink specials throughout the week, like 24-ounce cans of PBR for $1.50 on Wednesday nights. A Bud Light and a shot of Jameson will set you back around $6 (or less, depending on the night). But the cheapest drinks in town aren’t enough reason to make a dive your dive. The point is: Once you’ve ingested several rounds, there’s a bevy of entertainment options — coin-operated machines offering scratch lottery tickets or Skittles, a pool table, scary bathrooms that have everchanging chalk-graffiti walls. The bartender is also the chef, and you can get a cheeseburger with a side of chili dog at nearly any hour; it’s like a checklist for Drunktopia. On the other hand, there’s no place for you at this 62-year-old establishment if you aren’t sloshed, because the smell of stale cigarettes and grease is enough to nauseate anyone with a weaker constitution. The charm of the jukebox shifting from Liza Minnelli to thrash metal will be lost on the unfortunately sober. There might as well be a sign on the door: inebriates welcome.

Best Change of Course

The Ship 1217 Union Avenue • 816-471-4774 theshipkc.com

After several years as an, er, event space, the Ship licensed up and became a fully legit bar this year, opening in May. Surprisingly little of its Prohibition-like charms were lost in the transition. It remains a hard-to-find den of merriment in the West Bottoms, only now there’s a bright beacon of a sign hanging out front. The design still evokes the inside of a ship: old life preservers on the walls, portal windows. But there have also been cosmetic improvements, like the addition of an outdoor deck with a few windows that open to the bar’s interior. When bands play — there’s jazz on Thursdays and usually DJs playing records (soul, old-school country) on the weekends — they set up on the other side of those windows, and the music spills out onto the deck. If you have the right spot, you don’t even have to go inside to watch the show. It’s little

Best reason to drink north of the river

ScreenlanD arMour, Big rip Brewing co. anD cinDer Block Brewery We haven’t always enjoyed making the trip across the river to North Kansas City. But now, thanks to Screenland Armour, Cinder Block Brewery and Big Rip Brewing Co., we never pass up a chance to hop across. Screenland keeps us current on the latest movies worth seeing — and the best beers worth drinking during those films. Operators Adam Roberts and Brent Miller keep the theater’s bar stocked with a nerd’s playground of more than 100 beers. And when we haven’t had our fill there, we take refuge in the comfy taprooms of local breweries Cinder Block and Big Rip. Cinder Block’s Bryce Schaffter, Bryan “Bucky” Buckingham and Andrew Hicks — nice guys all — are kicking

®

BREWED IN

pitch.com

best of kansas city 2014

night

OREGON

the pitch

29A

KaraoKe every

Huge

Song

a

Night

Selec

smoking PaTio - CrafT beer $ 2 P b r / H i g H l i f e e v e r y d ay

tion

featuring Burgers, Steaks, Wings, Fish, Vegetarian options & More!

FeatuRing the best in Regional & local bands.

Kc’s numbeR 1 spot FoR ameRicana, Roots, Jam bands, FolK & blues acts!

The

Red

Balloon 10325 75th Street, Shawnee

All day happy hour!

Nightly ink r dinner &ialds! spec

est Pinba

ll

AMAZING MENU

-every Wednesday-

B

1515 Westport Rd. 816.931-9417

Pinball TournamenTs

in K C

check out FIND

HAPPY HOURS BY

time, feature, name or location

oPen 12Pm on saT. & sun.

4Pm-2am everyday 614 reynolds ave, kCk 913.499.8392 // 403Club.Com

ON YOUR

(913)962-2330

IPHONE BLACKBERRY ANDROID

Mention this ad for a Free Gift

®

happy hour Where it’s always

Handcrafted one sip at a time.

All Day, Everyday!

We now have

the Football Package!

2.25 $3.00 $5.00

$

DOmesTics

impORTs

GuiNNess 20Oz DRAfTs

Since 1888.

6332 RAYTOWN ROAD (816) 353-5700

30A

the pitch

best of kansas city 2014

FourRosesBourbon.com

night

pitch.com

Be mellow. Be responsible.

best of kc 2014

drink

4 201

Best taste of GeRmany

kc BieR co.

310 West 79th Street • 816-214-8691

robert Hoops

kcbier.com

Adam Roberts and Brent Miller toast Arts & Crafts. out solid brews. (Hopheads, try Hop Maven No. 3; nonhop fans, the Wit is where it’s at.) And just over the river bridge, Big Rip’s Josh Collins and Kip Feldt are coming up with tasty concoctions. (Banana-cream ale? Yes, please.)

There you go: the three best reasons to escape downtown and travel just a little bit north.

Best Reason to Visit LiBeRty

Rock & Run BReweRy and PuB 110 East Kansas, Liberty • 816-415-2337 rockandrunbrewery.com

You’re going to want a designated driver with you when you venture to Rock & Run Brewery, in downtown Liberty. In fact, your designated driver may want a designated driver because the hoppy, 14-percent-ABV double IPA Saminator is very, very tempting — and very potent. (Did we say 14 percent ABV?) Rock & Run keeps its 40 taps stocked with an appealing array of craft brews in addition to its own beers, so this field trip is a must for the beer fan. And there’s usually a Sporting, Royals or Chiefs game on one of the monitors. Oh, and bring your appetite, too. There’s a mean wood-oven pizza here, and the desserts are good and chocolatey, the better to layer atop all the beer you needed.

Best PLace to tRy new BeeR

BieR Station 120 East Gregory Boulevard 816-548-3870 • bierstation.com

John Couture is a good dude, the kind of guy you’d like to grab a beer with.

So it’s a good thing that Couture owns Bier Station, the Waldo tasting mecca and bottle shop. Bier Station keeps its 28 taps rotating smartly, with space dedicated to session and sour or wild ales, and you could pretty much point at random and end up with a beer to rave about. And if you can’t stick around the Station, you can get your beer to go. Besides a broad stock of craft sixers and four-packs, there are seemingly countless singles for you to turn into mix-and-match six-packs.

Yes, yes, of course you can pick up a bomber. Still, we recommend bellying up and hanging out for a few. And say hi to John if you see him.

Best BeeR eVent

aRtS & cRaftS at ScReenland aRmouR 408 Armour Road, North Kansas City screenland.com/armour

Screenland Armour operators Adam Roberts and Brent Miller are craftbeer aficionados, and they wanted to do something special for year No. 2 of their two-day Arts & Crafts celebration of craft beer, film, artists and musicians (put on for charity). The first night celebrated new local breweries and a home brewer on the verge of going pro: Big Rip, Cinder Block, KC Bier Co. and Crane Brewing Co. After a craft-beer documentary and a Q&A, the second night unleashed rare beers from New Belgium, Jolly Pumpkin, Prairie Artisan Ales, Mikkeller, Evil Twin and more than 20 others. The whole thing stayed in the air-conditioned theater building, a refuge from August’s heat. Better still, there were unlimited pours and no lines. What more could a beer geek ask?

If there’s such a thing as love at first taste, we felt it with our initial sip of KC Bier Co.’s Hefeweizen. The unfiltered wheat beer delivered a crisp, refreshing blast of banana and clove.

We longed for our next taste of the golden brew and couldn’t wait to try the other beers (sorry, our fingers just don’t let us type bier) from Steve Holle’s brewery. From the Dunkel to the Doppelbock to the Pils to the Weizenbock, everything we’ve had has left us impressed. Next, Holle and his crew will have us buying and refilling growlers on the reg. Uh, excuse us. We’re going to get on that … now.

Best wine sPeciaL

Bella naPoli 6229 Brookside Boulevard • 816-444-5041 kcbellanapoli.com

It doesn’t take much effort to find a cheap beer any night of the week. It’s far more difficult to find an affordable bottle of wine in a restaurant, let alone a weekly special. The markup on bottled wine in local eateries is such that plunking down for one can feel like an extravagance. But on Tuesday nights at Brookside’s cozy Bella Napoli, a bottle costs only a couple of bucks more than a glass of the same. The small Italian restaurant just south of the Roasterie sells half-price bottles on Tuesday nights, which cuts the cost of several offerings down to the low to mid-teens.

And because you’re in Missouri, you can put the cork back in and finish the bottle at home.

411 N 6th St, KCK (913)321-2410 fatcatsvortex.com

J A Z Z @ the BJC!

Best wine List

novel 815 West 17th Street • 816-221-0785 novelkc.com

There is a popular Hemingway quote about wine: “Wine is one of the most civilized things in the world … it offers greater range for enjoyment and appreciation than, possibly, any other purely sensory thing.” Hemingway may have been laying the defense for those who would criticize his preferred vice, but at Novel, it’s hard not to recall these lines with a deep and moving sense of understanding. At least, that is, when enjoying one of the bottles from chef and owner Ryan Brazeal’s smartly chosen wine list. The selection is impressive, with more than 65 bottles offered pitch.com

GreAt food! Full Dinner Menu Live MusiC! 5 Days a week BrunCh! sun 10:30a-3:00p Late Night happy houR Wed-Sat! st sounding club “The BJC is the be nsas City!” for live music in Ka nbAcH – AngelA HAge

3601 Broadway, KCMO 64111

(816) 298-6316 For Information, Reservations, Menu, & Performance Calendar, go to:

www.broadwayjazzclub.com

best of kansas city 2014

night

the pitch

31A

Thanks KC and The Pitch

Thanks KC and The Pitch

for nominating Bier Station as one of the 2014 “Best of KC” finalists.

for nominating Bier Station as one Thanks KC and The Pitch for nominating Station as one of the 2014 “BestBierof KC” finalists. bierstation.com | 816-548-3870 | 120 East Gregory

of the 2014 “Best of KC” finalists.

you take me t ’ n o o Gregory ...

Wbierstation.com | 816-548-3870 | 120 tEast bierstation.com | 816-548-3870 | 120 East Gregory SEnT

S

WITCHES SHOWS EVERY FRI & SAT STARTINg SEpT 19TH THROUgH OCT 31ST

8300 E. BluE Pkwy kansas City, MO

32A

the pitch

lefoufrog.com

Hop Toddy oddLy CorreCT 3940 Main • oddlycorrect.com

ON FRIdAY, OCTObER 31ST

816-737-FUNK (3865)

Le Fou Frog 400 East Fifth Street • 816-474-6060

Best unusual Iced coffee

COSTUmE CONTEST FOR RESERVATIONS CALL

Best Happy-Hour Menu

Happy hour can be a sad time spent downing cheap, fried food and cheap, mass-produced beer. The River Market’s Le Fou Frog offers a welcome departure from the typical gut-busting quitting-time routine.

Get to the French bistro at the early end of its 4:30-6:30 p.m. happy hour for plates of Prince Edward Island mussels, steamed in white wine, for $6.50. Other menu items — oysters on the half shell and charcuterie plates — come at a discount. And select glasses of wine are also on special. The dining area fills up fast, so grab a seat at the bar or on the patio for this uncommon happy hour.

y T k o n wn u F prE

in sparkling, rosé, white and red (24 of which are offered by the glass). The prices are fair and surprisingly approachable: Most bottles run between $30 and $45. Each wine is named with some tasting notes, which are better and more accurate than at most places.

But those are just the facts. The real joy of Brazeal’s wine list is in the careful attention paid to each vessel. Novel claims no allegiance to any specific regional cuisine, and just as Brazeal applies intercontinental influences in his recipes, his tastes are reflected in his vino collection. European imports (Spanish Garnachas, French whites from the Loire Valley) are placed, without bias, alongside domestic surprise gems (like the Gruet Blanc de Noirs from New Mexico or California’s Albariño).

And no matter what particular varietal sways your fancy on whatever evening you end up, happily full, on the quaint front lawn of Novel’s pre-Victorian exterior, you will feel safe with your decision. You may even feel civilized.

Because of its no-nonsense approach to caffeine delivery, Oddly Correct can be somewhat intimidating. Flavored lattes are not on the menu, and the shop doesn’t offer cream. But there’s good reason for this: The coffee is excellent, almost like art. Since the Main Street storefront opened in 2012, Oddly Correct has been recognized as one of the best coffee shops in the nation. Owner Gregory Kolsto’s artistic touches are no

TrY THE SpIDE CIDE r r

best of kansas city 2014

night

pitch.com

small part of its appeal: His unique letterpress pieces adorn the bags of beans, and the drinks are equally inventive.

One pièce de résistance is the hop toddy, a cold-brew coffee flavored with hop tea that takes multiple days to extract. It’s served in a brown-glass bottle, and it has the pleasantly crisp, bitter flavor of a good pale ale. It doesn’t contain alcohol, but just like when you drink a beer, you’ll want another.

Best frozen puMpkIn spIce latte

FrosT on THe pumpkin aT Hi HaT CoFFee 5012 State Line Road, Westwood Hills 913-722-5000

Like hoodies and 10 a.m. beers on Chiefs Sunday, pumpkin-spice lattes have become ubiquitous harbingers of fall. And one of the best places to find this seasonal refreshment is at Hi Hat Coffee, located in a quaint brick house off State Line Road that’s so charming, it feels like getting your morning coffee from a kiosk inside Hogwarts.

That’s fitting because this cozy café’s menu items often sound like something out of a book on spells: the Caramello, the Pom Pom, and the Frost on the Pumpkin. The latter drink lives up to the name: It tastes like drinking chilled pumpkin pie through a straw.

In fact, you might feel a little guilty for indulging in this treat, especially in the morning. It’s sweet and creamy, and it has the texture of a milkshake, plus a much needed boost of caffeine.

Best espresso

seCond BesT CoFFee 328 West 85th Street • secondbestcoffee.com

This town has seen a lot of coffee hype for a couple of years, most of it deserved. (Yes, we know we’ve done some of the hyping. What can we say?

Pour-over just kind of found us.) But when Second Best opened this past winter, well outside our usual, uh, grinding grounds and promising to change the local espresso game with a fancy-ass Pacific Northwest–built machine called a Slayer, we were a little whatever. Wornall at 85th Street isn’t a convenient drive from the Crossroads, and some glossily enameled gizmo that goes for $15,000 is no guarantee of a perfect shot. But that gizmo, first of all, is gorgeous — it looks like what you’d get if Ducati manufactured Creamsicles instead of motorcycles.

Second of all, the humans who run it know exactly how to get the best out of it. And we mean first best. Second

best of kc 2014

drink

Best’s espresso is complex and delicious, so pure in its greatness that a barista here could hand it to you and say, “Welcome to the rest of your life,” and you wouldn’t call that barista a pompous ass. They don’t say that here, but they could — and you’d gladly answer, “I know. Thank you. Another.”

Best O.G. COffee shOp

Broadway Café 4106 Broadway • 816-531-2432 broadwayroasting.com

Kansas City is suddenly bathed in coffee shops outfitted with all kinds of flourishes: painstakingly prepared pour-overs, homemade almond milk, violently tasteful interior design. We love it — on the days we can afford a $4 cup. The further we get from payday, though, the more we find ourselves hanging around Broadway Café. There, you can get ethically sourced beans and single-origin drip coffee — Broadway has been on the smart-coffee grind for more than 20 years — but at price points that midtown’s starving artists and, uh, journalists can afford. Consider its espresso deal: A double shot comes with a free 8-ounce hot drip (or 16-ounce iced tea) for a grand total of $2.22, after tax.

Broadway also offers free refills on coffee orders (and the best Rice Krispie treats you’ve ever had in your life for $1). True, there’s no Wi-Fi. But that’s just another way that this Westport institution keeps it real as a traditional coffeehouse: a hub where conversations flow and ideas are exchanged. Let the laptop army and the young professionals have their lemon-wedge espressos and highspeed Internet. The counterculture is still alive at Broadway, and the revolution will be exceedingly caffeinated.

Best NONalCOhOliC COCktail

Handmade sodas at tannin wine Bar 1526 Walnut • 816-842-2660 tanninwinebar.com

Few things suck more than being the lone sober person at a bar, especially when the only booze-free drink options are Diet Coke and unsweetened iced tea garnished with an anemic lemon wedge. But designated drivers should never feel left out while sipping one of Tannin’s house-made sodas. The two-yearold Crossroads wine bar makes its nonalcoholic drinks with the same care and attention as any cocktail.

The delicious strawberry-thyme cream soda includes fresh fruit and

a thyme garnish that’s rubbed along the rim of the glass, giving the drink an extra dimension of flavor. Couple that with the wine bar’s obscenely decadent truffle-oil fries, and a sober night out can feel like an indulgence in extremely sophisticated, highend comfort food. These sodas are so flavorful and aromatic that your wine-swilling friends just might ask for a sip.

WE ARE PROUD TO BE AMONG THE BEST! THE WELL BAR GRILL ROOFTOP Best Patio • Best Rooftop • Best Server - Emily Owens LEW’S GRILL & BAR Best Neighborhood Bar FALLDO WALDO CRAWLDO Best Beer Crawl

best of

HOPFEST CRAFT BEER FESTIVAL Best Beer Festival

readers’ choices

®

Page 39b Best VOdka driNk

sHatto BlanC manifesto

7539 WORNALL RD. KANSAS CITY, MO (816) 444-8080 Food ’til 2 a.m. / Drinks ’til 3 a.m. Daily www.LEWSGRILLANDBAR.com

7421 BROADWAY KANSAS CITY, MO RESTAURANT: 816.361.1700 CATERING: 816.255.3341 www.WALDOWELL.COM

1924 Main • 816-536-1325 theriegerkc.com/manifesto

It doesn’t matter if you’re not into vodka. It probably doesn’t matter if you’re not into milk (unless you’re lactose-intolerant, in which case, boo). The Shatto Blanc at Manifesto is like an adult version of a root-beer float. Made with Shatto Root Beer milk, Tito’s Handmade Vodka and yellow chartreuse, the Shatto Blanc is the dessert cocktail that makes you feel like a kid again — even as you’re looking super classy, leaning into the shadows of Manifesto’s slick basement digs. Order this drink from one of Manifesto’s talented bartenders and watch as the ingredients are combined, shaken with bitters and simple syrup, strained into a Collins glass and garnished with powdered sugar and a sprig of mint. The drink ends up looking a bit like an iced chai tea, but its smooth profile and subtle sweetness mean that the Shatto Blanc tastes like the best decision you’ve made all night.

Best rum driNk

Kill devil PunCH Kill devil CluB 31 East 14th Street • 816-674-4137 killdevilclub.com

It’s hard to find a good rum drink a rou nd t he s e p a r t s t h at i sn’t pitch.com

best of kansas city 2014

night

the pitch

33A

best of kc 2014

drink

uninspired or too heavy on tiki inf luences.At the Kill Devil Club, you won’t find any palm trees or Polynesian references, but you will find a breathtaking selection of fine rums and a very tempting list of rum cocktails. For rum novices and aficionados, there is no better starting place than Kill Devil Punch at the sexy Power & Light District club. Featuring Don Q light rum and Gosling’s Black Seal dark rum, this punch is a balance of the best of both worlds. Add to those fine selections the house-made Batavia arrack — a cinnamon-bark syrup — and a squeeze of lime, and you have a cocktail as universally likable as it is understated. Good thing because, at $52 and complete with a frozen pineapple cube in the center of the bowl that’s big enough to serve half a dozen of your friends, the Kill Devil Punch isn’t meant as a drink for one.

(You can order a single-serving version, but it’s not nearly as much fun.)

Best tequila Drink

AvocAdo MArgAritA Port FondA 4141 Pennsylvania • 816-216-6462

November 1, 2014 @ 11a-6p UptowN ShoppiNg CeNter

36th & Broadway, Kansas City, MO

free event!

Over 75 craft vendors & over 25 beers available!

Interested in sponsoring Crafts & Drafts arts and crafts fair?

Contact us at jason.dockery@pitch.com or call 816.561.6061 for additional information.

34A

the pitch

best of kansas city 2014

night

pitch.com

The health benefits of avocados have been well documented by fruit enthusiasts, and we are 100 percent onboard with any excuse to consume more guacamole. But we cocked an eyebrow when an avocado margarita appeared on Port Fonda’s menu. Historically, avocados and tequila have a solid friendship — one does not simply plow through a bowl of chips and guac without the proper drink in hand — but throwing the two ingredients together in a blender sounded like sacrilege. At Port Fonda, though, it works. Served in a slightly larger-than-average martini glass, the avocado margarita combines our favorite green fruit with Tequila Cabeza, cilantro, orange liqueur, piloncillo (Mexican brown sugar), lime and salt. There’s no blender involved — the avocado is muddled with cilantro and salt, and the other ingredients added and shaken together. This drink resembles some peaceful-looking foliage found in a tropical forest — the kind that, if touched, might prove not so innocuous after all. The only risk involved with Port Fonda’s avocado margarita is the chance that you may end up wanting another.

Best Gin Drink

BAsil rickey 715 715 Massachusetts, Lawrence • 785-856-7150 715mass.com

Remember summer? It was good.

The air conditioner didn’t break the way we thought it might. The basement didn’t get too wet that rainy night in August. And we spent one long evening drinking cocktails over dinner at 715, the drunk-kid-proof, upscale but approachable restaurant in Lawrence. There was a drink with Japanese whiskey that made at least one of us want to track down a bottle of the brand. There was the Hog Wash Sazerac, the thing with porkfat rye that sounds like it’ll put hair on a fella’s chest but really just gently rubs his potbelly. There was the one with bourbon and rhubarb bitters.

And there was the Basil Rickey. It was nothing more than cucumberinfused gin, basil, lavender, orange bitters and soda. But it tasted like summer. It tasted like kisses on a cool porch or swinging together in a foolproof hammock or holding hands on a picnic without bug bites.

It tasted like the best summer.

Best Whiskey Drink

Paig

e

er U ng

take

er. s ov

chris mullins

P p

AMericAn sour the AMericAn restAurAnt 200 East 25th Street • 816-545-8001 theamericankc.com

Paige Unger is having a serious year. A contest veteran who won the 2013 Paris of the Plains bartending competition, she landed, this past summer, at the American, replacing one-man institution Willie Grandison to become head bartender and bar manager. To that sometimes-stuffy legacy restaurant, Unger, who isn’t yet 30, has brought youthful verve, insisting on seasonal ingredients and new-school freshness.

Mind you, she doesn’t pooh-pooh the

best of kc 2014

drink

classics; she just reminds you how they got to be classics in the first place. Case in point: her American Sour, which reads simple on the menu (Bulleit rye, grapefruit, burnt simple syrup, egg white, Angostura 2014 bitters) but tastes like a nostalgic past, an elegant present and a bright future poured into a savor-every-sip glass.

Best Pitcher

Sangria at genghiS Khan 3906 Bell • 816-753-3600 • gkbbq.com

discover why the music community coda lunch | happy hour | dinner

BUY ONE, GET ONE FREE!!!

18th & Broadway KCMO

Best cocktails

extra Virgin

codakc.com

1900 Main • 816-842-2205 • extravirginkc.com

Buy any appetizer during Happy Hour (4pm-8pm Tues-Fri) and get an additional appetizer of equal or lesser value for FREE!!!*

C

*limit one per customer - expires 12/31/2014

Berto Santoro is a lot of people’s favorite bartender, for a lot of reasons.

Call us simple, but we like him for his drinks at Extra Virgin, every last one of them. In a restaurant where Michael Smith bends simple

b r o o k e va n d e v e r

The world of alcohol is full of characters: straightforward, grown-up, Iknow-what-I’m-getting-myself-into cocktails such as the standard gin

LIVE MUSIC NIGHTLY

(depending on the season). No matter what flavor you elect, the Genghis Khan recipe is refreshing and satisfying — and it’s only at the end of, say, your third pitcher that you remember there’s quite a bit of booze mixed with that fruit juice. Bonus: Glasses of sangria cost $5 all day Tuesday.

Bier Station’s John Couture wants you to try this. martini or Manhattan; the dependable, gregarious draft beer; the finicky, slightly high-strung white wine whose flavor changes depending on your mood (or choice of entrée). There’s a fourth category, reserved for dangerous, sneaky concoctions that could turn your grandma into a woo-girl before the glass is emptied. Sangria claims this honor and wears the medal better, perhaps, than even lemon-drop shots and champagne cocktails. The sangria at Genghis Khan — in five flavors: mango, strawberry, wild berry, peach-pear or passion fruit — is particularly treacherous because it’s so thoroughly camouflaged. It’s served in respectably sized carafes, made with white or red wine and stuffed with sliced oranges, limes, honeydew, pineapple, berries or watermelon

ingredients and seasonings into rich new tastes, Santoro keeps up with the boss with a constantly evolving, food-complementing cocktail list.

There simply isn’t a drink here that’s not brilliant, so much so that Santoro also makes you forget that you’re in a place with an enviable wine list. Red or white? Why, when you could order a second drink the color of an oceanside sunset, with the taste of a faintly erotic dream that you remembered sometime during the first drink?

Best crushworthy Bartender

Handcrafted Wine. Modern, Casual Dining.

ClarenCe Draper 4686 Broadway Street | Kansas City, MO 64112

It’s no surprise that we frequently develop crushes on our regular bartenders, our surrogate therapists.

816.531.1500 | chwinery.com

pitch.com

best of kansas city 2014

night

the pitch

35A

Bar Rosso Bo Ling’s Brio Tuscan Grille Chaz on the Plaza The Cheesecake Factory Chuy’s Cooper’s Hawk Winery & Restaurant Fiorella’s Jack Stack Barbecue Fogo de Chão Fred P. Ott’s Gram & Dun The Granfalloon Bar and Grill Ingredient Kona Grill McCormick & Schmick’s The Melting Pot Noodles & Co. O’Dowd’s Little Dublin P.F. Chang’s Plaza III, The Steakhouse Seasons 52 Tomfooleries Zocalo Mexican Cuisine & Tequileria

Happy hour anyone? The Plaza boasts the most happy hours of anywhere in Kansas City. Grab a brew, some pizza and a barstool at Coal Vines.

Sip on chilled white wine with ahi tuna tacos at Cooper’s Hawk Winery & Restaurant. And, we haven’t even mentioned late night happy hour. For all of the Happy Hour details, go to CountryClubPlaza.com. No wonder the Country Club Plaza is Kansas City’s premier shopping, dining and entertainment destination.

15 MOUTH-WATERING BLOCKS / ENDLESS POSSIBILITIES COUNTRYCLUBPLAZA.COM / 47TH & BROADWAY / FACEBOOK.COM/COUNTRYCLUBPLAZA

36A

the pitch

best of kansas city 2014

night

pitch.com

best of kc 2014

drink

But they are, in fact, far superior to therapists: For a fraction of the price, a bartender listens to our trials and tribulations, empathizes, g ive s ge ne ra l ly s ou nd adv ic e, cheers us up and provides proper medication (usually distributed in variously f lavored doses of 1.5 f luid ounces). More often than not, bartenders are attractive. They are

Best Bartender

Kenny Cohrs, Jax Fish house & oyster Bar 4814 Roanoke Parkway • 816-437-7940 jaxfishhouse.com

There’s something about Kenny Cohrs that immediately puts you at ease.

Sitting at his bar is almost the same thing as sitting in his living room. He

BUY LOCAL! Z AC H B AU M A N

Ask For It By Name S.D. STRONG VODKA

Kenny Cohrs pours another winner. kings and queens of a most precious domain, and with that power comes a certain amount of allure. The kingliest of all bartenders then must be Clarence Draper, who alternates his reign between RecordBar on Monday, Tuesday, Friday and Saturday and MiniBar on Wednesday. There’s not a single guest entering one of Draper’s establishments who isn’t greeted with a generous smile, a firm handshake, inscrutable eye contact and an offer to fulfill any request. Draper remembers your name. He remembers your drink.

He remembers how many shots it took you to get shitfaced the last time, and he makes sure you’re in good hands on your merry path to oblivion. He will bail you out of a terrible blind date by summoning an “emergency” phone call for you.

(He knows when the date is terrible, too; he is that good.) And he is somehow never too slammed to do any of these things. Oh, Clarence.

Marry us.

welcomes you with a kind smile and twinkling eyes, as though he’s greeting his favorite nieces and nephews.

He’s amiable with novice drinkers, patiently explaining the subtleties of the various liquors he keeps on his shelves, more than willing to educate and to create custom beverages. He’s highly perceptive: Even the most specific cocktail order somehow tastes better when he makes it. But there’s more to Cohrs’ talent than his vast bar knowledge and unflappable people skills. He is dedicated to his craft in every possible way, and has an elegant approach to everything, from the measuring of ingredients to the presentation of the cocktail. He treats each preparation as tenderly as a kitten. Once the drinker is enjoying the libation, Cohrs surreptitiously observes the response and waits for the sigh of absolute contentment following that first sip, the deeply satisfied smile telling him that, once again, he has won the game. And Cohrs wins every time.

A small batch, hand crafted Vodka Distilled in a cave in Parkville, Missouri Washington Cup SILVER MEDALIST www.sdstrongdistilling.com pitch.com

best of kansas city 2014

night

the pitch

37A

Think Fast. Think FedEx.

T

Interested in a fast-paced job with career advancement opportunities?

Join the FedEx® Ground. team as a part-time package handler.

he Hotel Phillips is the first choice for those visiting Kansas City who value a creative and authentic experience. The Phillips has been and continues to be an iconic part of the true soul of downtown Kansas City.

NOW HIRING front desk restaurant engineer housekeeping VaLet

Part-time Package Handler

Thank you for nominating us one of Kansas City’s BEST Hotels

$10.20-11.20/hr. to start (KS) $10-11/hr. to start (MO)

As a member of the Hotel Phillips team, our associates can earn eligibility for: • various discounts on hotel amenities • tuition reimbursement • medical, dental and life insurance coverage • performance based incentives • 401 (k) retirement plan • flexible spending account • travel benefits at other marcus hotels • competitive wages apply in person at 12th & baltimore or *eligible benefits vary by position at www.hotelphillips.com

Qualifications: • 18 years or older • Must be out of high school • Must be able to load, unload and sort packages, as well as perform other related duties All interested candidates must attend a sort observation at our facility prior to applying for the position.

To schedule a sort observation go to

www.watchasort.com and select a date/time to attend.

Two locations:

8000 Cole Parkway, Shawnee, KS 66227 12501 NE 40th St., KC, MO 64161 FedEx Ground is an equal opportunity/affirmative action employer Minorities/Females/Disability/Veterans committed / toa diverse workforce.

38A

the pitch

best of kansas city 2014

night

pitch.com

Hotel Phillips Benefits*

PRogRams in:

Think Fast. Think FedEx.

Start a c a re e r i n less than m o nt h s ! 1 8

Interested in a fast-paced job with career advancement opportunities?

Join the Fedex® smartPost team.

• Massage Therapy • Medical Assisting • Fitness Training

86%

Job Placement Rate*

Campuses in KC & Lawrence • 1.866.443.9140 • www.wellsping.edu *Massage Therapy only. All programs combined total 81%.

Part-Time Parcel Assistant The primary responsibility of the Parcel Assistant is to move packages throughout the facility. The Parcel Assistant will be required to safely perform assigned tasks while meeting predetermined standards. In this flexible position, the incumbent will rotate into several areas to perform tasks including loading, unloading, palletizing, scanning or quality assurance as assigned by Dock Manager.

This is a part-time position. Available hours are based on business needs, but typically range from 15-20 hours per week.

MusT be:

At least 18 years of age •Not currently in high school • Must pass background check If you are interested in applying please sign up for a sort observation at:

www.attendasort.com

or attend the Open House Saturday, September 27, 2014 from 10am - 12pm Wednesday, October 1, 2014 from 10am - 12pm

Where: 22161 West 167th St, Olathe, KS 66062 Fedex smart Post is an equal opportunity/affirmative action employer (Minorities/Females/Disability/Veterans) committaed to a diverse workforce.

pitch.com

best of kansas city 2014

night

the pitch

39A

NOW OPEN

A groundbreaking exhibition uniting Plains Indians masterworks

45th & Oak, Kansas City, Missouri | nelson-atkins.org | 816.751.1ART The exhibition is organized by the musée du quai Branly, Paris, in partnership with The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, and in collaboration with The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. | Robe (detail), Central Plains artists, ca. 1800−1830. Native tanned leather, pigment, porcupine quills, 58 3/8 x 88 1/4 inches. musée du quai Branly, 71.1886.17.1.

best of kc

arts & entertainment 2014

José Faus Murals are big, and big equals important. So what’s so humble about mural painter José Faus? His works empower by creating a shared visual experience rooted in a community’s history or culture. Faus designs these building-sized paintings — such as the Hmong story-cloth mural in downtown Kansas City, Kansas — collaboratively with young people.

And he’s a true servant in the sense that he helps other artists achieve their visions in a way that only he can, as in contributing haunting spoken-word audio to Matthew Dehaemers’ “Navigating a Way” (a wooden tire-shaped swing on display at Studios Inc. this spring) or playing the most charming of the post-apocalyptic zombie nurses in Stanya Kahn’s movie Don’t Go Back to Sleep, which screened at Grand Arts in early summer. So we’re going to take full advantage of this opportunity to brag on Faus’ behalf: Did we mention that he’s also an accomplished writer, a founding member of the Latino Writers Collective and president of the Writers Place board of directors? No? Well, he is.

Best Writer

anne Boyer Anne Boyer is an assistant professor of creative writing at the Kansas City Art Institute, and she has published poetry chapbooks with clever titles, and she founded and edited a journal, and her bona fides are properly intimidating for those of us who start way more books than we finish and often take a week to get all the way through a long New Yorker article. But let’s be blunt: There’s at least one person with those same rough credentials in cities X, Y and Z, plucking mean and beatific notions from the ether and welding them into intelligent new lines. Such smart persons aren’t a dime a dozen, but they’re in plentiful enough supply that even people who say they like poetry either fail to discover them or take them for granted. Boyer is different. She’s local, yes, but she’s hardly ours; rather, she’s a citizen of some altogether smarter plane, and she scares the shit out of us — in a witty, life-affirming way. The intellectually rigorous, politically biting things she says or cites — she tweets like she invented not only Twitter but also libraries — add up to a parallel reading of current events and the 21st-century psyche, but she provokes thought before she pushes emotional buttons.

And now she’s interpreting something so personal, we hesitate to bring it up: her own recently discovered cancer.

But we bring it up anyway because what she has written so far about it, on her Tumblr page, is vital, deeply moving and generous to readers like us, who can offer almost nothing in return. She might mock us a little for saying that. Then again, we’ve always liked her mockery just about the best, and we look forward to more.

Best Book

Motherland Fatherland hoMelandsexuals

By Patricia Lockwood We had only in recent months become aware that we were dwelling in relatively close proximity to the rarest of literary phenomena, the hot poet, when The New York Times Magazine published a profile of Patricia Lockwood titled “The Smutty-Metaphor Queen of Lawrence, Kansas.” The occasion was the publication of 32-yearold Lockwood’s second collection, Motherland Fatherland Homelandsexuals (Penguin, $20), a ribald, funny, furiously inventive dance through the fleshpots of a wicked, teeming imagination. We’d seen her Twitter feed and wondered, at first, whether her persona — Emily Dickinson as the pitch.com

grep hoax

Best HumBle servant of tHe arts

We spent some time in Lockwoodland.

most popular 900-number operator of all time — was a gag brand rather than a literary challenge. The new volume doesn’t refine Lockwood’s freewheeling virtual presence as much as it charts a path into a postsocial-media netherworld where the only inappropriate thoughts are the ones you refuse to give full-throated voice. As in a poem titled “The Father and Mother of American Tit-Pics,” in which Lockwood writes, “If teeth are

best of kansas city 2014

night

the pitch

41A

42A

the pitch

best of kansas city 2014

night

pitch.com

arts & entertainment

best of kc 2014 like pearls, and if skin is like a pearl, 4 201 were twelve and if the gates of/heaven pearls, imagine the pearl explosion that would/happen if someone bit their own boob in the afterlife.” You get the idea, except that you don’t — there’s heft to the silliness and silliness to the heft, and somewhere in here there’s also loneliness and not loneliness, and things we haven’t figured out yet and won’t until the fifth or sixth reading, next year and the year after.

Best RaBBle-RouseR Kansas City’s art scene got a little more contentious this year, thanks to Charlotte Street Foundation curatorin-residence Danny Orendorff, who kicked off his time in the seat with an exercise in political and civic engagement called We’ll Make Out Better Than Okay. That exhibition blended recession-fueled rage (paintings of Chase banks on fire, portraits of political enemies snared in incisive commentary) with glimmers — scant glimmers — of hope. Subsequent exhibitions The Tyranny of Good Taste and The Stench of Rotting Flowers connected the curator’s confrontational aesthetic to queer concerns. Orendorff’s selections aren’t always pretty, and we’re the better for it. Because politics isn’t pretty, either.

Best ReheaRsal

The Kansas CiTy symphOny’s aDam sChOenberg reCOrDing preview COnCerT June 19

One Saturday morning awhile ago, we spent a couple of hours at the Kauffman Center for the Performing Arts, attending a talk by composer Adam Schoenberg about how he writes music. As he spoke, he used a computer to demonstrate some of his techniques, with further illustration by way of witty little virtuoso turns by key members of the Kansas City Symphony, for which he was composer-in-residence over the 2012-13 season. Afterward, we talked with him a bit ourselves.

He was smart, down-to-earth and polite (rather than the temperamental gossip we sort of hoped he’d be), and we came away wishing that we could listen to his music at home the rest of the weekend. Flash-forward to this past June, when the symphony treated a small audience (necessarily limited to the upper reaches of the

J o h n L a m b e r to n

Danny OrenDOrff

We got lost in Robert Morris’ “Glass Labyrinth.”

Kauffman Center’s Helzberg Hall, for acoustic reasons) to a run-through just ahead of a session to record three of Schoenberg’s pieces. The composer, who turns 34 this fall, introduced his own “Finding Rothko,” “American Symphony” and “Picture Studies,” and Michael Stern led the symphony through convincing recitations of each. The latter, which the symphony commissioned and premiered in 2011, gives thrilling orchestral voice to works at the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, and is our favorite of the three.

We’re looking forward to buying two copies of the CD when it comes out.

One for us and one to send the Onion.

Best Radio station to discoveR new Music

KTbg 90.9 “The briDge” Last January, KCPT Channel 19 relaunched onetime Warrensburg NPR affiliate KTBG — which it had purchased the previous year (relocating its signal source in the process) — as a radio station unlike any other in Kansas City. The Bridge (the name carried over) has the zero-commercial advantage of community radio, minus all the talk shows and mashed-up programs. It also has that NPR polish, with the emphasis on music rather than news. The Bridge broadcasts music around the clock, and rather than devoting one hour a day to local music, it scatters local songs throughout its daily playlist. This means local music reaches a greater number of listeners

than ever before — without pausing to make room for a roid-rage announcer bullying you to shop a tire sale.

Best conceRt venue

The miDlanD 1228 Main • 816-283-9921 • midlandkc.com

The Midland is such an integral part of our well-rounded music scene that it’s easy to forget that the theater reopened just six years ago. It’s a midsize venue, the perfect catchall for big-name touring acts, comedians and local mini fests — and it has the added benefit of breathtaking architecture, inside and out. Five massive and spectacular crystal chandeliers decorate the ceilings, and scalloped gold-leaf panes expand majestically around them. Going to a show at the Midland feels a bit like being dropped squarely into the opulence of Titanic, and we’d be lying if we said we hadn’t imagined ourselves at the top of one of those staircases, re-enacting a Jack-and-Rose scene. Plus, the acoustics are great; parking isn’t terrible; and no matter what show you end up seeing, you always tend to feel a little important being inside the historic walls.

Best Place to Get YouR countRY on

wesTpOrT salOOn 4112 Pennsylvania • 816-960-4560 westportsaloon.com

The Westport Saloon doesn’t exactly have all the flavoring of a John Wayne pitch.com

flick. That’s probably for the best. If you enjoy whiskey and live music and have a special place in your heart for cowboys and country, saddle up to a barstool at Westport’s newest music venue. Portraits of honky-tonk heroes and folk greats line the brick walls, and the small stage plays host most nights to a slew of unpretentious roots acts (and usually without a cover). Everything about the Westport Saloon is straightforward and reliable, right down to the hundred or so whiskey bottles from which you can pick your preferred poison. There’s a tight partnership with local roots music label Little Class Records, so you never have to worry about what kind of band you’re stumbling up to see — it’s all quality stuff. All you need to do is kick off your boots and let loose.

Best local act

raDKey At this point, there are entire countries in Europe that know the story of the three Radke brothers better than the average Kansas City music devotee does. That attention is deserved, but perhaps more remarkable than global recognition for a hometown act is the oddball story of guitarist and singer Dee, bassist Isaiah, and drummer Solomon Radke. Home-schooled since middle school, the brothers — now between 17 and 21 years of age — reveled in the good fortune of having awesome parents who let them spend just the right portion of their

best of kansas city 2014

night

the pitch

43A

adolescence playing video games, absorbing comic books and mainlining Ramones records. The product of this alternative upbringing revealed itself in June 2013, when Radkey released its debut EP, Cat & Mouse. An aggressive, scuzzy temper tantrum of a record that falls somewhere along the inky spectrum of hardcore punk and metal, Cat & Mouse delivers a happy fury bested only by a live performance

by Radkey itself.

Best 7-Inch

Josh Berwanger’s Oh Bis When former Anniversary frontman Josh Berwanger released Strange Stains last September, it was like a thick, honeyed balm made to soothe our indie-rock-wearied souls. Berwanger’s combination of upbeat handclaps and bittersweet — or mostly bitter — lyrical themes, channeling some essential 1990s pop influences, gained him widespread praise. For local-music lovers, he couldn’t release new material fast enough. So Sid Sowder and his Too Much Rock Singles Series stepped in, and in June we had Oh Bis: a two-song 7-inch featuring the title track — a Berwanger original — and a cover of the Jags 1978 song “Back of My Hand.” The limited-edition 45 was a hot, bright flash of power pop, all jammy choruses and confident energy. More, please.

also one of the fest’s most energetic and elastic performers, as convincing as an earnest Catholic schoolgirl as she was a troubled, Beatles-bellowing teen. Fennewald is a gifted comic performer, and her facial expressions, in particular, kept us laughing through both scripts.

Best chArActer chAmeleon

Tosin MorohunFola By the Way, Meet VeRa staRk Unicorn Theatre 3828 Main • unicorntheatre.org

Tosin Morohunfola might truly be a lizard. That’s the easiest way we can account for his uncanny ability to slither into a character with confidence and precision before shedding it like an old skin. Morohunfola was electric in the Unicorn’s production of By the Way, Meet Vera Stark, as comfortable swaggering on a Depression-era Hollywood set as he was bounding around the stage as a jittery, neurotic academic. His physical presence in both roles was exhilarating — and exhausting — to watch. We’ll look for him onstage this season, but we won’t count on recognizing him. He’s that good.

Best theAtrIcAl sweetheArt

Best FrInge Fest surprIse

Red death

Best FrInge Actress

Melissa Fennewald Melissa Fennewald was one of the KC Fringe Fest’s busiest actors, working a double shift at Just Off Broadway Theatre with meaty roles in Jesse Ray Metcalf’s (Virgin.) and Vicki Vodrey’s A Hard Day’s Night. Lucky for us, she was 44A

the pitch

best of kansas city 2014

night

pitch.com

We

oke st br

o ur

h ea r

ts .

B r i a n Pau l e t t e

The KC Fringe Fest tends to lean heavily on burlesque and blue comedy (not that we’re complaining). But Red Death, Bryan Colley and Daniel Doss’s latest collaboration, surprised us with something new: a deliciously dark chamber opera based on an Edgar Allan Poe plague narrative. The production was as polished as a regular-season premiere, and the moody piano score and striking stage pictures (care of director Tara Varney) made the show a standout for its nuances as much as for its novelty.

Kenzie wesT Fat Pig The Living Room 1818 McGee • thelivingroomkc.com

Neil LaBute’s Fat Pig brutalizes its leading lady. But the play was even harder to watch with actress Kenzie West as Helen. West romanced us early in the Living Room’s production with her expert comic timing, then swept us off our feet with her mellifluous voice and genuine warmth. By the end of the tragedy, our hearts had broken twice: first for the cruelty of

best of kc 2014

arts & entertainment those around her, and then for the way West made Helen so vulnerable.

Best sleazy scholar

RobeRt Gibby bRand Seminar Unicorn Theatre 3828 Main • unicorntheatre.org

Academia breeds a particular kind of asshole: the arrogant professor you simultaneously loathe and long to impress. Actor Robert Gibby Brand found the perfect balance as Leonard, the manipulative writer and workshop leader at the center of the Unicorn’s Seminar. Brand blazed through Leonard’s speeches with equal parts bitterness and passion, and no matter how much we wanted to hate him, we understood why his students kept coming back for the next critique. By curtain call, we were ready ourselves to join Leonard’s — and Brand’s — cult of personality.

Best attempt to succeed

Phil newman, How to Succeed in BuSineSS witHout really trying Metropolitan Ensemble Theatre 3614 Main • metkc.org

People make their way up corporate ladders with the aid of various attributes: ambition, ability and work ethic, say. Or maybe charm, personality and a knack for playing the company man. Phil Newman displayed plenty of charisma and acting aptitude when he took on the lead part in How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying, Metropolitan Ensemble Theatre’s revival of the 1960s musical satire on corporate America.

And he charmed us in the process, displaying hard work as well as skill and personality. As the show begins, he’s a lowly window washer at the World Wide Wicket Co., but he believes that all he has to do is follow the steps of his book — How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying — to get the girl and make CEO in record time. But we know it was training, dedication, quick thinking — and talent — that made his starring role stand out. Give this man a raise and a promotion.

Best royal redemption

bRuce Roach tHe winter’S tale Heart of America Shakespeare Festival kcshakes.org

Leontes in The Winter’s Tale is one of the Bard’s more difficult roles,

HO O R AY FO R H O LLYWO O D

but you wouldn’t g uess it from Bruce Roach’s masterful performance in Southmoreland Park this past summer. Roach made the jealous king’s lightning-quick descent into rage seem somehow logical, and his confident command of the language kept the play’s convoluted timeline clear. Even better: an Act 5 redemption transforming the king from resentful villain to remorseful lover. With Roach at the helm, we were happy to forgive.

FROM THE

Best spectacle

romeo and Juliet Kansas City Repertory Theatre kcrep.org

When the lights first came up on the Spencer Theatre’s stark, open stage, the spectacle hounds among us brayed nervously. But director Eric Rosen and his team were just getting started. The handsome production showcased Jack Magaw’s grand set pieces; Victor En Yu Tan’s blazing, brilliantly colored lights; and enough gauzy white dresses from Lauren Gaston and Lindsay W. Davis to costume a Joe Wright film.

Rosen united each skillful design element into a series of dazzling tableaux, including a breathtaking final scene, in which the walls seemed to swell and fall in unison with Romeo and Juliet’s last gasps.

Best immersion in a play

almoSt, maine UMKC Theatre umkctheatre.org

Almost, Maine placed us a lmost there. Last winter, when we entered the small, intimate Studio 116 at U MKC’s Perfor m ing A r ts Center, we landed in playwright John Cariani’s fictional town. With our seats perched amid the town’s trees, as the set’s Northern Lights f lickered overhead, we became unannounced guests one night who had let ourselves inside the homes, hangouts and lives of the story’s couples. The talented UMKC student actors, under the direction of John Rensenhouse, let down their guard, showing us their inner lives over several vignettes that ran from the heartfelt to the hilarious. Now, nearly a year later, the lovers and former lovers of Almost remain as close in mind as they were, that night, within our reach. pitch.com

best of kansas city 2014

night

the pitch

45A

TRU HERO. TRU HISTORY. TRU FAMILY EXPERIENCE.

TRU MAN

– TripAdvisor Reviews

Read more Museum reviews...

EXPLORE AMERICA’S BEST PRESIDENTIAL MUSEUM OPEN DAILY | $8 Adult, $7 Senior, $3 Youth (6-15)

816.268.8200

delighted us and made us sorry to leave their fantasyland.

Egads ThEaTrE

Best World War i centennial coMMeMoration

egadstheatre.com

MUST-SEE FASCINATING WORTH THE TRIP!

Ranked #1 attraction!

Best Place to Mourn Your Fleeting Youth

TrumanLibrary.org

Ah, Egads — thanks for being the place to take in a musical while contemplating your own mortality. The company’s 2014 season featured a full slate of youthful crowd-pleasers (the pop-culture-savvy Godspell, the freshman romantic comedy Lysistrata Jones) with nary a weak link. The choreography was always crisp, the songs buoyant, the cast as energetic and lovable as an Adderall-fueled golden retriever. Company director Steven Eubank runs a tight ship, and his fresh-faced actors this year executed each athletic dance move with such martial precision that you could feel your joints groan in sympathy. Let’s just say we’re grateful that Off Center Theatre serves drinks.

Best triP Back to childhood

Chitty Chitty Bang Bang The Coterie Theatre 2450 Grand • thecoterie.org

★ screenland.com/armour ★

kc’S moSt tubular locally owned theatre Featuring:

The LargesT CrafT Beer seLeCTion oF anY theatre in america.

proudly Showing and Supporting independent films including locally made films! and later thiS year the return oF

sCreenLanD CrossroaDs! Coming Soon at armour: Shocktober: 15 FilmS, 2 tV ShowS and Special eVentS ★ throughout october ★ www.screenland.com/shocktober for details!

(816) 421-9700 ★ 408 armour rd, north Kansas city, mo 64116 46A

the pitch

best of kansas city 2014

night

pitch.com

Did the kids have more fun than their parents at Chitty Chitty Bang Bang? What grown-up doesn’t want a flying car, after all? Ian Fleming’s classic 1964 children’s book, made into a movie as well as a musical, came to eye-popping Technicolor life at the Coterie Theatre. Here, characters named Truly Scrumptious ( born to candy-maker dad Lord Sc r u mpt ious), Ca rac tac us Potts and Baron Bomburst rubbed elbows with spies, a child catcher, a toymaker and other bigger-thanlife folks. From the start, during an actor’s preshow Q&A with the tykes on the f loor in front of the stage, this production delivered laughs.

Bright, cartoonish costumes held our gaze and curiosity, while the large and capable cast, whether in sync in rousing musical numbers or wending through the crowd, sang and danced and told an intriguefilled yet comedic story of an inventor and the baron who wanted his crazy car. The ensemble captivated completely, even through children’s cries, interruptions or occasional wailings. Led by Jake Walker as the inventor, cast members Stefanie Wienecke, Martin Buchanan, Hughston Walkinshaw, Jerry Jay Cranford, Julie Shaw, Bob Linebarger, and many talented others

Journey’s end Kansas City Actors Theatre kcactors.org

The World War I centennial has been marked all year with memorials, but Kansas City Actors Theatre’s local commemoration stands out for its rock-solid, humanizing production of R.C. Sherriff’s alternately gritty and genial Journey’s End. Staged, fittingly, at the National World War I Museum, Journey’s End provided a riveting and complex portrait of the men of C Company, brought to life by one of last season’s strongest ensemble casts. A furious final scene plunged us into the trenches with them (thanks, in part, to Uldarico Sarmiento’s clever scenic design).

By then, we were ready for an end to this — or any other — war.

Best scenic designer

Jack Magaw the Foreigner, romeo and Juliet, and When i Come to die Kansas City Repertory Theatre kcrep.org

Sure, cushier budgets can give designers a leg up on the competition — it’s tough to craft a winning scenic design from a palette of rehearsal cubes and a couch you found on the curb. But we have a hunch that Jack Magaw could make stage magic from just about anything, having seen his dynamic designs this season. From his multistory, detail-rich fishing lodge in The Foreigner to the pared-down playing areas and fancy fly pieces for Romeo and Juliet to the death row he brought to life in When I Come to Die, Magaw’s sets are as ingenious as they are functional. Subtle touches — carrying the Romeo and Juliet set’s grand arches over into a pattern on Juliet’s balcony — reveal the artist’s attention to detail (and give you something to hunt for during intermission).

Best season oPener, give or take the MaYor

ain’t misBehavin’ Spinning Tree Theatre spinningtreetheatre.com

Spinning Tree Theatre’s opening night of Ain’t Misbehavin’, last fall,

best of kc 2014

Don Ipock

arts & entertainment

The Rep’s Romeo and Juliet was dead-on. felt like a night on the town. Before musicians and singers swooped onto the stage and into the virtual clubs and rent parties of the 1920s and ’30s Harlem Renaissance, Kansas City Mayor Sly James made his own one-night-only appearance, attending the show. His celebrity at first distracted some in the crowd, but it ultimately lent a festive air to this celebration of Fats Waller, the died-too-young jazz musician whose songs and stride piano burst with his big personality, his passion and his love of life. Named for one of Waller’s songs, Ain’t Misbehavin’ was the first musical revue to win a Tony Award for best musical, in 1978, and Spinning Tree’s production, directed and choreographed

by Michael Gray ma n a nd A ndy Parkhurst, was Exhibit A for why the show holds up. Five talented and charismatic singers (Eboni Fondren, Jennie Greenberry, Matthew King, Ron Lackey and Linnaia McKenzie) and the musicians accompanying them (Angie Benson, musical director; Julian Goff; and Brian Wilson) brought a bygone era’s music and songs — and their long-gone composer — to everlasting life.

Best NeighBorhood Watch

Clybourne Park The Unicorn Theatre 3828 Main • unicorntheatre.org

We didn’t have to dig into the archives to appreciate Clybourne Park, a follow-up of sorts to Lorraine Hansberry’s barrier-breaking 1959 A Raisin in the Sun. It picked up where that earlier play left off — also jumping 50 years ahead in a progression of time, if not in characters’ points of view.

The Unicorn Theatre’s production

of Br uce Norr is’ sma r t P ulitzer Prize– and Tony Award–winning play took us first to the suburban house that Raisin’s black Younger family was tr y ing to buy, introducing us to the sellers and their dea l i ngs w it h t he wh ite neig hborhood rep working to keep the color line drawn. And then, in Act 2, it fast-forwarded 50 white-f light years to young white buyers wanting to rehab that same house, now in the city’s core, and negotiating w it h blac k neig hborhood reps.

Terms we hide behind — property values, gentrif ication — worked here to expose unconscious bias, in an often too-familiar way. And as we observed the talented actors — led by Brian Paulette, David Fritts, Jennifer Mays and Jessalyn Kincaid — we couldn’t help but look inward, too, and laugh uncomfortably at ourselves.

Best Look at a PrisoNer’s Life

When I Come to DIe Kansas City Repertory Theatre kcrep.org

The killing of a death-row inmate splits opinion and draws controversy, but rarely does it put a spotlight on a prisoner’s thoughts and feelings and fears. Whether it should is not the subject of Nathan Louis Jackson’s When I Come to Die, a play that doesn’t pigeonhole characters but allows them to breathe free from stereotype. In turn, the Rep’s playwright in residence offered us insight into two incarcerated men, Damon and “Roach,” who appear to us as fellow human beings, not as committers of crimes. Their isolation, their loneliness, their failed family relationships and their ultimate fate

816-241-4626 | 1036 N aGNes ave

Leveirvy FeridaMy &usatsuridcay Grill Hours 10am-10pm | Bar Hours 10am-1:30am

Corner of Gardner & aGnes (front st. & n. Ks ave., 1 mile e of isle of Capri)

pitch.com

best of kansas city 2014

night

the pitch

47A

" . . . parts mystery, comedy, history lesson, parlor game, quiz show and fourth-wall smashing happening."

--Alan Scherstuhl

thanK yOu Kc fOr VOti ng uS tOp 3 BeSt antique StOr e!

115 W 5th St KcMO 64105 816.221.0220

48A

the pitch

best of kansas city 2014

night

pitch.com

arts & entertainment

best of kc 2014 compose a small story inside a big 4 20a1 quiet but eloissue, a tale that gets quent telling, away from headlines and, especially, far from judgment.

Best OvercOming Of a gimmick

Three Viewings Kansas City Actors Theatre kcactors.org

It was dark and stormy the night, not long after Halloween, when Three Viewings lured us to the Muehlebach Funeral Home. Coming in from the rain, we wondered if we’d arrived at the right place, whether we’d en-

Best PrOjectiOns

Jeff Cady The effecT of gamma rays on man-in-Themoon marigolds Kansas City Actors Theatre

Projections are hardly a novelty in theater anymore, but in the wrong hands, they can still come off as gimmicky. Not so with Jeff Cady, projection designer for the Kansas City Actors Theatre production of The Effect of Gamma Rays on Manin-the-Moon Marigolds. Cady crafted projections perfectly tailored to the

ward KC theater’s homecoming king, Kyle Hatley, who clocked enough stage hours this season to make us suspect human cloning. He tickled us as Ellard in The Foreigner, shook us with his direction of When I Come to Die, and shocked us with his own world-premiere script, Master of the Universe — all while serving as the Kansas City Rep’s associate artistic director. Hatley has moved to Chicago, but expect an encore performance. He’s returning this season as “resident director” for the Rep’s Sticky Traps and is also slated to star in the theater’s An Iliad.

o sten sibly i n spi re d by a r u ra l Kansas river, fused organic and industrial forms; cold, austere light; and cartoonish color. We could (and maybe did) stare at it as though we could step into the canvas, hunting for hidden details like a child obsessed with a Where’s Waldo? book. Allman’s work taps into a similar sense of wonder, overriding detached, academic appraisals in favor of curiosity and gut instinct.

All we can say is, cool.

Best new Place tO take in lOcal wOrk

Best sculPture

PluG ProJeCts’ solo sPaCe

“Glass labyrintH” by robert Morris Donald J. Hall Sculpture Park Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art 4525 Oak • nelson-atkins.org

Danny O

rendorf f broug ht Jeff T “ B ouqu ackett ’s et” to C harlotte Street.

tered a venue for a play or an actual service. Black-clad ushers — an actual funeral director and his wife — were handing out programs. Kansas City Actors Theatre took its scene setting seriously here. But the atmosphere turned out to be more festive than somber. Three class acts — David Fritts, Katie Gilchrist and Jeanne Averill — bared their souls in this show’s three monologues. Crisp, well-crafted dialogue and surprising reveals — sometimes poignant, often funny — made this more than a novelty trip to an all-too-real place to see a show about events surrounding death.

Many months later, we’re still thinking about those fine performances.

show’s themes and tone, from delicate scratchings in a girl’s science notebook to whoa, dude spiraling space shots. The emotional impact was clear, and his designs earned audible wows from the audience at the Living Room. This is exactly what projections are supposed to do — when someone this good does them.

Best curtain call

Kyle Hatley Kansas City Repertory Theatre kcrep.org

It can sting when a local artist leaves Kansas City for some other metro.

But it’s hard to harbor any ill will to-

We like looking at art, but we like experiencing it even more. With Robert Morris’ “Glass Labyrinth,” which opened in the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art’s Donald J. Hall Sculpture Park on May 22, you don’t just see the sculpture but also experience it with your whole body. Morris, a Kansas City native who now works in New York, practiced experimental dance in the 1950s. Perhaps his knowledge of the human form moving through space influenced the design of this 50-foot-by-50-foot-by-50-foot triangular sculpture of inch-thick glass panels, laid out as a true labyrinth, with a single, winding path leading to the center. Morris’ transparent material perplexes: Does the path continue just a few feet away, or are you in danger of smacking your face on a wall of glass? The museum’s sign reads: “As you move through its potentially disorienting environment, we invite you to consider: Is your experience a metaphor for negotiating the uncertainties of our time?” We hope the sculpture park acquires more works with this level of visitor engagement.

Best visual Head triP

riCKy allMan “tHis is a river” We’ve come to expect to be both delighted and disoriented by Ricky Allman. Still, the scale and scope of the artist’s “This Is a River,” from the Kemper at the Crossroads exhibition The Center Is a Moving Target, blew us away. Allman’s painting, pitch.com

plugprojects.com

Plug Projects’ repertory just keeps expanding. This year, the collective christened its new Solo Space, a gallery reserved for solo exhibitions from local artists. The strength of the inaugural shows suggests that this space is already here to stay: Julie Farstad alternately skeeved us out and delighted us with her doll-themed exhibition, Under the Orange Sky, and Madeline Gallucci’s views of urban Confectionary had us fawning over oil slicks. Cheers to Plug for providing a space to recognize what we knew all along — that some of the best art in town is made here.

Best sOutH-flying artist

Calder KaMin at Crystal bridGes We’ve been Calder Kamin fans ever since we saw her ingenious Impact Proof installation, back in 2012.

That witty, urban-minded project involved the fabrication of highly convincing bird decals and their placement on the windows of tall buildings to avert avian crashes.

Th is pa st su m mer, Ka m i n wa s named by curators at the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art as a participant in a wide-ranging exhibition titled State of the Art: Discovering American Art Now. When pilgrims to Arkansas’ art mecca see the Kansas City Art Institute alumna’s work, she will have returned to her roots in Austin, Texas, to resume her studio practice there. But she was here when Alice Walton’s people called, and her art looks great anywhere, so we’re claiming her as our own.

best of kansas city 2014

night

the pitch

49A

BLOODY MARY MEET PERFECTION A PERFECTLY CRAFTED VODKA TRANSFORMS A PERFECTLY CRAFTED COCKTAIL.

SEE FOR YOURSELF AT MEETVODKA.COM

ENJOY RESPONSIBLY. ABSOLUT® VODKA. PRODUCT OF SWEDEN. 40% ALC./VOL. DISTILLED FROM GRAIN. ©2014 IMPORTED BY ABSOLUT SPIRITS CO., NEW YORK, NY.

2014 N i g h t & D ay

I shall be telling this with a sigh Somewhere ages and ages hence: Two roads diverged in a wood, and I – I took the one less traveled by, And that has made all the difference. ~ Robert Frost HAIRCUTS • HoT Towel SHAveS • gRoomSmen

8235 Corinth Mall • Prairie Village, KS 66208 913.381.8800 • solepatchbarbers.com walk-ins welcome - appointment preferred

pitch.com

best of kansas city 2014

D AY

the pitch

3B

We care about your banking.

What we really value is your time.

NEAR YOU 54 Branches 135 ATMs

OPEN LATE 26 Branches Thursdays until 7 p.m.

Saturdays until 4 p.m.

FREE MOBILE BANKING APPS Apple速 AndroidTM

FREE ONLINE BANKING Bill Pay Account Alerts

PLUS Instant Issue Debit Cards 24/7 Phone Account Access

Thank You for Your Votes!

commercebank.com / 816.234.2000 J16593 KC Pitch Convenience Thanks Ad 2014.indd 1

9/23/2014 12:40:52 PM

Thank You

for voting us in the Best of Kansas City

Thank you for your voTes.

IT’s been a greaT year!

robert Motherwell Lithograph Sold January 20, 2014 Price Realized: $5,160

Thomas hart benton “nebraska evening” Lithograph Sold September 15, 2014 Price Realized: $3,190

Dale Chihuly Persian set Sold July 29, 2014 Price Realized: $4,524

aT auCTIon now! onLIne bIDDIng Through oCT. 21sT aT giorgio Morandi “still Life”

www.kcauctionco.com

Sold January 20, 2014 Price Realized: $16,800

ernest Trova “falling Man”

Sold June 30, 2014

2003 Mercedes sL500 23k Miles

Proceeds Benefit Rockhurst High School

Sold January 20, 2014 Price Realized: $10,500

signed and Inscribed Photograph of John f. kennedy

from a Collection of gertrude freyman original works

noveMber fIne arT auCTIon nov. 4-18 onLIne onLy aT www.kcauctionco.com

ellsworth kelly

Untitled Signed Artist’s Proof Lithograph

auCTIon. aPPraIse. assIsT. how Can we heLP you?

816-283-3633 www.kCauCTIonCo.CoM

ben shahn

“The Blind Botanist” Signed Lithograph

ellsworth kelly

Untitled Signed Artist’s Proof Lithograph

as seen on:

Call for your appointment today!

WE’RE YOUR

QUICKIE

913.345.1400 www.ppkm.org

Fast, convenient and confidential sexual health appointments.

WE’RE YOUR

WE’RE YOUR

MORNING AFTER An open-minded environment for

SEXUAL EXPERIENCE STD testing and treatment for men

pregnancy testing, emergency contraception and conversation.

and women. You’ve got questions; we’ve got answers.

WE’RE YOUR

Planned Parenthood of Kansas and Mid-Missouri

THANK YOU TO WHO VOTED FOR

WWW.DANMEINERS.COM | 816 842 7244 2500 WEST PENNWAY | KANSAS CITY, MO 64108 8B

the pitch

best of kansas city 2014

D AY

pitch.com

B e st of day

W

e are morning people. Shut up — we are! We like to watch the sun rise against the downtown skyline, painting Union Station and the Kauffman Center for the Performing Arts optimistic shades of orange and yellow. We like coffee and eggs and then more coffee. We like watching other morning people sing to themselves in the next highway lane. We like to tend our mental list of what we must do and where we might go today. Grocery store after work, for sure, but maybe the labyrinth at the Nelson-Atkins over lunch. We like to turn on the computer and see the KC websites and Twitter feeds wake up. We like to talk with our co-workers about the Royals, about the Chiefs, about Sporting. We like that our co-workers like these conversations a little more this year. We like lunch with our colleagues, lunch with friends, lunch alone. We like window-shopping. We like browsing record stores and bookstores. We like the bus sometimes. We like parks. Some of us like our city’s chances for improvement these days. Some of us like the ways in which our city is already better than it was a year ago. We like that so much of what’s best to buy and see and experience and talk about come nighttime are things we took care of when the sun was a little higher. We like daylight anywhere. But we love the daytime most right here, when the best of Kansas City gleams just right.

Contents people & plaCes sports & reCreation

21B

goods & serviCes

27B

readers’ ChoiCes

39B

11B

Legacy on the Country Club Plaza

• Voted Best Realtor in Kansas City 2012 & 2013 • 5 Star Professional Award Winner • Multi-Million Dollar Producer • $33 Million in Written Business in 2013

Assisting Buyers and Sellers in MO and KS

#1 REAL ESTATE COMPANY NATIONWIDE

With over 96,000 agents, we sell a home every 30 seconds!

Sharon G. Aubuchon Cell: 816.863.3003 Office: 816.994.9932 Fax: 816.994.9982 Email: SharonAubuchon@Remax.net www.sharong.m.remax-midstates.com

Go to my Zillow profile here:

A FULL SERVICE TITLE COMPANY RESIDENTIAL & COMMERCIAL SETTLEMENT SERVICES Value and Assurance that only an attorney-owned title company can offer!

We specialize in providing superior service to real estate agents, lenders, sellers and buyers.

SUPERIO

CongratuRlaTITLE Sharon A tes u on her ye

buchon

ars of be

Best of K ing a Pitch City Winansas ner!

Contact us for all of your title insurance needs.

Fred R. Greenstein, Esq. Superior Title & Escrow of Kansas City, LLC 4550 West 109 St., Suite 150

Serving Jackson, Clay, Platte, Lafayette, and Cass Counties in Missouri, and Johnson, Miami, Wyandotte, and Leavenworth Counties in Kansas.

Overland Park, Kansas 66211 Tel: 913-948-7780, x102 | Fax: 913-948-7785

www.superiortitlekc.com

best of kc

people & places 2014

Best sign

Broadway Butcher Shop

Best new Downtown Hangout

thou MayeSt

Best HiDeout

phoenix Jazz cluB 802 West Eighth Street • 816-221-5299

3828 Broadway • 816-931-2333

419 East 18th Street • 913-396-9540

thephoenixkc.com

When the Broadway Butcher Shop opened in late 2012, its selection was enticing. High-quality cuts of beef, pork, lamb, poultry and seasonal rare game filled the cases in the spacious store. However, one aspect wasn’t so enticing: the cheap signage that filled the storefront windows. The old-fashioned cursive lettering made the Broadway Butcher Shop seem ancient, and while vintage signs may work well for a number of dive bars down the street, they don’t hold the same appeal for anyone wishing to purchase an elk rib-eye. You barely noticed the shop if you were driving past it to Westport, and if you did, you weren’t particularly inspired to stop in. Fast-forward to July, and Broadway Butcher Shop has made a few additions with an alluring array of exceptional seafood, house-cured meats, fine cheeses and dry goods.

There’s also a new storefront with a classy logo, compliments of KC ad agency DMH. The new Broadway Butcher Shop sign — emblazoned across the windows in butcher-red letters and featuring a rustic, masculine steer’s head — doesn’t just grab your attention. It compels you to go inside and get to know your local butcher.

thoumayest.com

It’s easy to forget that bars and restaurants exist in downtown Kansas City outside the Power & Light District. The subsidized entertainment district spelled doom to many eateries on the periphery. The Phoenix Jazz Club, however, persists. The fabled hangout just west of the Library District is one of the few easy-in, easyout locales for a downtown weekday lunch. It’s tucked away from the more obvious midday destinations, good for a two-beer meal outside your boss’s scope. By nightfall, the club is one of the few remaining vestiges of Kansas City’s history as a jazz hot spot. Small, quaint and dimly lighted, the nighttime version of the Phoenix makes for a dependable downtown hideout.

Thou Mayest feels like a cross between a campground lodge and a downtown oasis. The aesthetic inside is all dark: warm woods, vintage signs and quirky foliage.

There’s a vague Boy Scout vibe.

Most mornings, this means that coffee drinkers and work-study types take refuge at Thou Mayest’s handsome bar, on one of its cozy couches or at its upstairs tables (and balcony, for that matter). As the day stretches on, though, the atmosphere shifts.

The music gets a little louder. The bar fills with people more interested in the liquor-lined shelves than the espresso machine. This is what we have always wanted: A proper coffee shop that happily adds that drop of whiskey to an afternoon Americano, thereby negating that awkward moment when you have to surreptitiously pull out your f lask and get the job done yourself. And like any good coffee shop, half the fun of Thou Mayest is the crowd — which just happens to be a marvelously attractive, young artsy type — that you get to see pass through on any given day. Who knows, maybe you’ll find some natural sugar to complement your morning brew (or evening cocktail).

Best Place to take a cHance

corner reStaurant 4059 Broadway • 816-931-4401 thecornerkc.com

If this paper had an OKCupid profile (Tinder just plain hurts our feelings … Pity sex, anyone? Eh?), it would read like this: Us: Cute in dim light; chronic overcompensator; discarded frequently; always willing to meet you in your favorite bar, no matter how fancy or filthy. pitch.com

You: Love/tolerate us; drive us home from outpatient procedures; let us tell you what music to like and what news to care about and pretend like you’re listening.

If we were ever to find a date, the first place we would go is Westport’s Corner Restaurant. This place isn’t candles-and-three-forks romantic.

It’s a friendly, sunlit hangout of mature food and surprising cocktails.

Manageable but not cheap. In other words, it’s the place for an early date to show that you know how to have a fun grown-up date. And here’s its other trick: If the date goes well and a follow-up drink is in order, options are within walking distance. About a block away, you have the classic patio of Harry’s. And if it goes badly, there’s sweaty cold comfort in PBR and noise in the Union’s basement.

Best local Boy MaDe gooD

Matt pearce Former Pitch contributor and Kansas City Star intern Matt Pearce has taken his journalistic talents to Southern California, where he’s a national reporter for the Los Angeles Times. But the Missouri native came home to cover the Ferguson, Missouri, riots that erupted after a police officer there shot and killed an unarmed black teenager. Pearce’s reporting on the saga was solid, but what was really no-

best of kansas city 2014

D AY

the pitch

11B

Become a member, give a donation, or volunteer at BikeWalkKC.org!

Join BikeWalkKC today!

Thanks for nominating Tour de Bier as the year’s Best Bike Ride!

Ride with us May 17, 2015!

TourdeBierKC.com

A vintage, family-friendly bike ride through the Historic Northeast.

All proceeds benefit BikeWalkKC’s women and girls initiative.

Register at BikeWalkKC.org

You can keep making excuses to not go to college if you want to. But the fact is, Park University has removed all the real barriers.

So all you have to do is get out of your own way and GO FOR IT. PARK.EDU/PITCH or call (888) 319-9522.

KansasCity.Bcycle.com

12B

the pitch

best of kansas city 2014

D AY

pitch.com

USE ACTION CODE: PITCH

people and places

best of kc 2014

And Teachman found her way back onto morning airwaves as a meteorologist and traffic anchor for KCTV Channel 5. Viewers accustomed to seeing both together have had to consider changing local-TV-news allegiances, but fans of Nichols’ and Teachman’s had already taken to social media to voice their displeasure with KMBC, so we figure there were a lot of changed channels.

4

201

Best Blogger

andreW palmer Meanderings from Clay County, Missouri

Tim Carpenter (left) confronts Milton Wolf. table was when Pearce caught wind of cops losing complete control of their judgment when they arrested Washington Post and Huffington Post reporters at a McDonald’s for no good reason. Pearce called the city’s police chief to let him know that his foot soldiers had just apprehended a pair of reporters from major news outlets, eliciting an on-the-record “Oh God” response from the feckless administrator. The reporters were released, but the incident helped raise the profile of the ghastly behavior of Ferguson’s police.

Best Journalistic MoMent

Tim CarpenTer flaying milTon Wolf There was always something creepy about Milton Wolf, the tea-party Republican who challenged Senate lifer Pat Roberts in the Kansas GOP primary. Topeka Capital-Journal ace political reporter Tim Carpenter ferreted out an insane element of Wolf’s behavior when he obtained patient photos that the Leawood radiologist had posted on Facebook. Carpenter confronted Wolf about the photos, as well as Wolf’s distasteful comments about them, during a taped interview at a campaign stop. Wolf looked shocked and defeated as he lamely tried to explain his violation of patient rights (using stupid jokes) as an opportunity to educate people. Carpenter played it like a professional, but he still seemed disgusted with the doddering political hopeful. The interview went national and cast Wolf as an irresponsible and unethical doctor, and his campaign never recovered.

Best neighBorhood Journalists

Jay SenTer and dan Blom, prairie Village poST Several news startups have come and gone in Kansas City since the quest to boost profit margins began cutting into the reporting ranks of The Kansas City Star. Operations like KC Free Press and Urban Times magazine have popped up to fill various voids left by the shrinking Star, only to fold. Some have been earnest reporting efforts whose finances didn’t work out. Somehow, the onlineonly Prairie Village Post has endured, becoming the closest source of daily news from the tiny cities that populate northeast Johnson County. Jay Senter and Dan Blom, the publication’s two-man crew, manage to crank out several stories a day about goings-on in Prairie Village, Roeland Park, Fairway and Mission. Much of the content is straight-up balls and strikes of city council meetings, local businesses and developments, and high school sports. But the Post has emerged as a must-read on otherwise undercovered happenings in the burbs.

Best BounceBack

County politics can be a bit boring — unless they involve the yahoos running Clay County government.

The northeast metropolitan county runs an outdated, rural form of government in which residents vote for the clerk and recorder of deeds.

When uninformed voters are left to decide these offices, which should be appointed, sometimes unprofessional people rise to power. For years, Andrew Palmer has chronicled on his blog — Meanderings from Clay County, Missouri — the oddball personalities, incompetent officeholders, and sketchy personal and f inancial relationships that connect Clay County leaders. Palmer, a 32-year-old conservative from Liberty, was among the first to smell a rat in former county auditor William Norris, a 20-something who ascended to office with no educational or professional credentials but rather a rap sheet and a pervy penchant for sharing nude photos of women from his past. More recently, Palmer has covered the chaotic administration of Pam Mason, a presiding commissioner who drew the ire of other officeholders by cutting their budgets when she found them politically or personally incompatible.

Palmer’s writings may have had a hand in knocking Mason out of the Republican primary in August. You’re welcome, Clay County.

Best law-school student

liSa TeaChman and Joel niCholS

ZaChary BerkSTreSSer

KMBC Channel 9 cleared out a couple of familiar faces late last year and earlier this year. Gone from the weather team: Joel Nichols and Lisa Teachman, sent packing to make way for new blood. But it wasn’t long before the familiar faces resurfaced. In the summer, Nichols started co-hosting daytime talk show Kansas City Live on KSHB Channel 41.

Zachary Berkstresser has a goofy, jocular demeanor. He carries himself in an informal, easygoing manner that you don’t often find among law-school students. (Berkstresser is enrolled in UMKC’s School of Law.) He seems more at home on a disc-golf course than in the arena of local politics. He lost badly in his race for the Jackson County Legispitch.com

lature but, in a way, kind of defeated the incumbent anyway. The lawyerin-training did what more established, elected prosecutors in Jackson County haven’t been able to do since 2006: Get James Tindall, an elected official, off the Legislature. Felons aren’t supposed to keep elected office in Missouri, but a tortured legal and legislative history muddied the waters long enough for Tindall to hold onto his seat despite a felony tax-fraud conviction in 1999. To Berkstresser, it seemed clear that Tindall was holding his seat illegally, and he had the courage to raise the issue before the courts. Berkstresser’s move backed Jackson County Prosecutor Jean Peters-Baker into a corner. PetersBaker belatedly managed to get Tindall to resign before he could be removed from office. Berkstresser may have gotten trounced in the August primary, but he emerged from the process with his first court victory.

Best Voice of reason

STeVe klika Most meetings of Johnson County’s Board of County Commissioners start with routine appointments to various county positions. The proceedings almost never generate discussion, and these items are routinely passed. But even moderate Johnson County, Kansas, the antiabortion crazies can get beads of sweat rolling down the ass cracks of the white men who populate the commission. Allen Greiner, a well-qualified University of Kansas Medical Center physician, was tapped during the summer to take a public-health-adviser position with the county. His appointment should have glided through, but abortion antagonist Mary Kay Culp began pestering commissioners about Greiner’s testimony on behalf of another doctor who had a sketchy financial relationship with slain abortion provider George Tiller. Most commissioners blanched at this tenuous relationship. Steve Klika, a first-term commissioner, acknowledged that he was anti-abortion but criticized fellow commissioners for allowing the issue to thwart the appointment. “I am really frustrated that this issue of abortion has come before this dais. This is not an issue we should be wrestling with here.”

Klika got outvoted, and Greiner’s appointment went down in flames.

But the commissioner still made a worthy stand against less principled colleagues.

best of kansas city 2014

D AY

the pitch

13B

Now g n Leasi

Nominated Top Apartments in KC

Vintage or brand new, we’ll find the perfect apartment to suit your style and budget.

816.569.9737

Call today!

macapartments.com

Looking for one of Kansas City’s BEST aparTmEnTS? How does NEW CARPET, NEW PAINT & an ON-SITE STAFF sound?

1, 2 & 3 Bedroom Apartments Starting at $495 ($199 deposit)

8718 Wornall Road, Kansas City, MO 14B

the pitch

best of kansas city 2014

D AY

pitch.com

|

CALL (816) 333-1018 NOW!

:

people and places

best of kc 2014 Best Crushworthy woman 4 201

likes Korean soap operas and depressing documentaries. So we’re pretty much sold.

Best BureauCrat

B u sh n

ell wo

rks fo

r us .

s a b r i n a s ta i r e s

DeBBie siragusa

Tricia Bushnell In the last year, the state of Missouri has earned a gruesome reputation as a place where prisoners are executed in a cloud of secrecy, and mysteries surrounding the drugs and methods used to administer them continue.

Twenty-three death-row inmates recently filed a lawsuit in federal court challenging Missouri’s death-penalty procedures. It has been a sobering reminder about how our government can make mistakes in life-or-death situations. In light of this, it’s worthwhile to note that there are really smart, hardworking people trying to correct those mistakes, people like Tricia Bushnell, the legal director of the Midwest Innocence Project. By day, Bushnell works to free wrongfully convicted men and women, an estimated 5 percent of the prison population. By night — well, we don’t know exactly what the California native does by night. But in addition to fighting the good fight, she told us in a May Pitch Questionnaire that she

Debbie Siragusa, the Kansas City Public Library’s CFO, is pleasant and straightforward to most people.

To staffers at the Tax Increment Financing Commission of Kansas City, though, she’s a pain in the ass. Her background in finance lends itself to strict attention to detail, a trait that seems lost on many TIF Commission staffers. (The TIF Commission manages tax incentives doled out to developers.) The commission is in disarray, and the agency that manages it, the Economic Development Corporation, is a mess. Much of this would be swept under the rug but for Siragusa’s constant needling of other commissioners and staffers to explain things like gaps in the EDC’s budget, advice given by the commission’s lawyers, and the appropriateness of incentives for certain projects. Through this Socratic method, it’s often revealed that the commission can’t always explain what it does — surprising from an agency with so much power of the purse.

Best PolitiCian

greg Orman Olathe businessman Greg Orman sized up the dominant political parties when he considered running for the U.S. Senate. Neither suited him, so he decided to challenge Sen. Pat Roberts as an independent. His approach is a breath of fresh air in today’s noxious political cli-

mate. Usually independent candidates have all the allure of write-in hopefuls for school-board elections, but Orman has a real shot at winning. The privateequity man, who sold an energy business to Kansas City Power & Light, has more funding than most independents could hope for and the support of established Republicans who are sick of the tired incumbent. In early September, Democrat Chad Taylor bailed on the race, giving Orman yet another boost.

GOPers freaked out about Taylor’s move and suddenly because concerned about the enfranchisement of Kansas Democrats. They also slapped the liberal tag on Orman, even though he has contributed to Republican candidates in the past. Is it any wonder that Orman sees the two-party system for the often false dichotomy that it is?

Whether tracking the influence of puppet masters like Rex Sinquefeld and ALEC (American Legislative Exchange Council) or just drawing attention to crazy tweets by Missouri lawmakers (House Rep. and gun nut Brian Nieves has been a source of much unintentional comedy), Progress Missouri is an essential source of information for non-wingnuts in the Show-Me State. And we highly recommend subscribing to Progress Missouri’s High Five at Five e-mail newsletter, which rounds up the five biggest statewide stories of the day, and which we skip only when we’re too outraged to handle any more bad news.

Best PolitiCal organization

chaD TaylOr vs.

Kris KOBach

PrOgress missOuri The Missouri legislative session has become a hyper-partisan melee in which pernicious and idiotic ideas — largely conceived on the conservative side of the aisle — gain traction, become bills, and sometimes even get signed into law. So it’s a great blessing to have a group such as Progress Missouri on the ground in Jefferson City. Sean Nicholson and his team of progressive advocates are an oasis of sanity in a state whose officials often seem to care most about receiving gold stars from the NRA, denying women reproductive rights, and transferring money from cash-st rapped public services to greedy corporate interests.

Best PolitiCal slaP Fight

In the last four years, Kansas’ rush to elect goofily ultra-right politicians has been the equivalent of the state taunting Arizona, Oklahoma and Texas with “Do you even lift, bro?” Kansas has backed the most conservative politicians with the most right-wing pinions. (That’s the word ornithologists call the outermost feathers on a wing. See what we did there?) But the Kansas Supreme Court’s smackdown of Kris Kobach was particularly good for reasonable people who believe that the secretary of state is splashing his urine around too many areas of the state constitution. Democratic U.S. Senate candidate Chad Taylor decided in September that he no longer wanted to run, thus leaving a two-way race between three-term

FeAtured ProgrAMs Meet the Author: Barbara Stuber

saturday, oct. 11 @ 1p.m.

Central resource Library

Johnson County Library is your first stop for weekend “edutainment” on Second Saturdays.

Chat with local artists and authors, catch a film screening and more.

“ChoColAte Me!”

Visit JoCoLibrary.org/ SecondSaturdays for a complete schedule.

saturday, oct. 11 Blue Valley Neighborhood Library @ Noon Central resource Library @ 3 p.m.

with Shane evans

pitch.com

best of kansas city 2014

D AY

the pitch

15B

SOMETHING FOR EVERYONE!

find out

family memberships at an affordable rate!

how to get a

free month

Sen. Pat Roberts and independent candidate Greg Orman. Kobach said Taylor didn’t ask to get off the ballot in just the right way and refused to drop his name. We’re sure it’s just a coincidence that Orman had been building a strong lead over Roberts — who doesn’t own a house in Kansas — in polls for months. Taylor protested to the Kansas Supreme Court, which wisely read the state constitution and ruled that Kobach had no case. You’re always a hoot, Kris.

for visitors and local policymakers to forget about. Unfortunately, this makes it a haven for trash dumpers.

Brett Shoffner is picking up the city’s slack. Any given Saturday, Shoffner, a bicycle enthusiast, can be found 2014 picking through the park’s honeysuckle to extract nasty refuse from Cliff Drive’s hillside. It’s a thankless, unending effort — the trash always returns. But Shoffner remains at it.

Sometimes he gets help from a corps of volunteers. But most often he’s

s a b r i n a s ta i r e s

6901 N. Holmes, Gladstone / (816)423-4200 / www.gladstonecommunitycenter.com

forever, BROOKSIDE forever,

Kemper Arena: a transformer after all?

Best Voter Action

Jackson county Voters reJect the MoDot tax Increase

BROOKSIDE

Missouri voters were asked in August to approve a new statewide sales tax to improve transit projects. Locally most of that cash would have been funneled to expanding the streetcar.

The streetcar that hasn’t been built yet. Voter turnout was low, and in KC proper, it was supported. But Jackson County voters — and 59 percent of voters statewide — said, “No, thanks.” Now, in rural parts of the state, this tax increase would have likely done good stuff. But in Jackson County, voters refused to support expanding a track system that hasn’t even been laid yet.

Best community Volunteer

WWW.BROOKSIDEKC.ORG

Brett shoffner Cliff Drive is a rare natural treasure in a city that lacks mountains, oceans or lakes of meaningful scale. It’s also tucked away in the secluded Historic Northeast, a place that’s easy

WWW.BROOKSIDEKC.ORG

16B

the pitch

best of kansas city 2014

D AY

pitch.com

alone. His time isn’t devoted solely to Cliff Drive. Mountain bikers who shred over the trail systems in Swope and Rosedale parks have Shoffner to thank for his work in making those recreational opportunities possible.

Shoffner spent untold hours expanding the Swope Park mountain-bike path into the city’s longest network of trails for experienced and novice bikers. He also helped build the socalled Rozarks Trails in Rosedale Park, which opened in May.

Best community tAke-BAck Project

Lots of LoVe As little as a year ago, a drive through Kansas City’s Ivanhoe neighborhood was rather unremarkable. If passers-by noticed anything, it was an abundance of overgrown vacant lots — Ivanhoe has more than 500 of them. Or, rather, had. The Lots of Love project — inspired by a years-old idea from a class at the Kansas City Art Institute and revived by local artist (and KCAI graduate) Sean Starowitz — aims to reclaim and repurpose some

best of kc 2014

people & places of these abandoned lots as community spaces. So far, Lots of Love has converted the space at 3700 Woodland into a “meet and greet” lot, featuring a fire pit, picnic tables and an orchard.

Next up is a space a block over, which will become the “let’s play” lot, with brand-new equipment for both kids and adults to enjoy. More than public parks, these spaces are designed with the surrounding community in mind, with support from Ivanhoe residents and attention paid to their needs and desires. If only all public spaces were created this way.

the summer, and we love the dreamy and inviting way he photographs our fair metro — lush skies, artists and art galleries, landmark KC architecture — from fresh angles. From his iPhone to the pockets of hundreds of thousands of people around the globe, he’s a visual ambassador for our Midwestern burg.

Best BeeR-DRinking DaD twitteR

Best Razzing By the national PRess

The Onion, America’s greatest satirical news source, ran a story this summer with this headline about the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art: “Museum Proudly Exhibits Picasso Shitty Enough to Be in Kansas City.”

As simple, ever-humble Midwestern folks, we collectively took our lumps and gave an aw-shucks chuckle. But as a city plagued by self-esteem issues, we felt compelled to correct the record. The Nelson publicly noted that it has 12 Picasso pieces, thank you very much! So, the Onion, sirs and madams, could you please correct your headline to read: “Museum Proudly Exhibits 12 Picassos Shitty Enough to Be in Kansas City.” We’d appreciate it.

Best instagRaM CeleBRity

rOberT JOsiah bingaMan Local artist Robert Bingaman — robertjosiah, as he is known on Instagram — has 652,000 followers on the photo-sharing app. By comparison, late-night TV host Seth Meyers has 101,000 followers. Vice has 328,000 followers. Bingaman has roughly the same follower count as rapper Riff Raff — and Riff Raff is pretty much the best person on all of Instagram.

How did Bingaman do it? By being an early adopter, for one. He was on one of Instagram’s earliest “Suggested User” lists, which organically and exponentially grew his audience. But he’s also, you know, pretty damn good at taking pictures on his phone. Bingaman seemed to be observing the scenery in glamorous coastal locales for much of

on stands

NOVEMBER 27 Th a n k

s , da d

.

s a b r i n a s ta i r e s

The OniOn pOkes kansas CiTy and The nelsOn-aTkins MuseuM Of arT

Gift Guid20e14

deadline November 14

The Business Alliance for a Sustainable Economy is focused on promoting and advocating for our local business members and educating our community on the importance of supporting locally owned, sustainably-minded businesses.

JOIN !

Y TODA

Think Local.

Be Local.

Buy Local.

?

How is your business impacting your community? Take the

Greater Kansas City Quick Impact Assessment

paTriCk Mullin

MEASURE WHAT MATTERS

@PatsHoppedUp

If anyone should get paid to come up with 140-character quips, it’s Patrick Mullin. Despite this self-effacing selfdescription — “My tweets = 50% beer, 40% bad jokes, 30% parenting, 20% hip-hop, and 10% hummus. I’m also really bad at math” — Mullin knows how to craft a witty tweet. His beer knowledge and advice are spot-on, his jokes more hit than miss. (A favorite: “If the storms get really bad in KC tonight, maybe a törnadö will hit the new IKEA and assemble all the furniture.”) And his lunch-note sketches to his daughter are heart-melting.

Best RefReshing City twitteR aCCount

@kCMOWaTer There is no beverage less sexy than water. It’s clearly no Zima, which has been scientifically proven as the sexiest beverage in human history. Water is a standard: You need water to live, bathe and make more fun drinks — like Kool-Aid! And a municipal water department is the embodiment of a service that nobody thinks about until something goes wrong. But don’t tell the KCMO Water Services Department that. If you follow @KCMOWater on Twitter, you’ll see that the civil servants in charge of our H2O are proud of this city’s pipe juice. KCMO Water is a stream of useful information and goofy thoughts about water. For example: “If Don Draper drank water, he would

basekc.org

Marr and Company, P.C. Certified Public Accountants 816-363-8700 Jason D. Louk, CPA

Our success is a result of your success

1401 East 104th Street, Suite 100 | Kansas City, Missouri 64131

Kansas City’s

Premier Pet Salon

2014

1713 Westport Rd * KCMO

816.561.DOGS

www.doggiestylebowtique.com pitch.com

Meniton this ad for

$5 OFF GROOMING* *First time clients only

best of kansas city 2014

D AY

the pitch

17B

best of kc 2014

people & places

DownloaD the new Pitch Street aPP

prefer tap. #KCWater.” And, “Moist. It feels moist out. Moist. Love that word. #KCWater.” What does that even mean?

It does not matter! And their greatest work: “#Elvis died 37 years ago today.

The King was a fan of water, and we’re still fans of the King. #ElvisPresley.”

This one came with a photo of the King drinking a glass of water. The workers behind KCMO Water may not work in the most intriguing civic department, but they’re in on the joke.

Best Get-Off-YOur-Ass WYcO MOMent

ArmourdAle Hike And Bike–islAnd View loop trAil opening

Where you're going, what you're doing. 24/7.

In 2009, the Kansas Health Institute ranked Wyandotte County last out of the 105 Kansas counties for community health. Oof. But damn if the Unified Government of Wyandotte County hasn’t been trying to fix this. When the YMCA of Greater Kansas City wanted to close its outpost on Eighth Street, the commissioners scraped together the dough to keep it open. And commissioners have spent two years opening the 1.3-mile Armourdale Hike and Bike–Island View Loop trail. It runs along the Kansas River, with views of nesting eagles and other wildlife.

As KCK Mayor Mark Holland noted at the trail’s opening, it makes it harder for residents to stay inactive: “[P]arks and rec is not about fun and games, it’s about a healthy lifestyle.”

Best IMprOveMent tO eAst sIde QuAlItY Of lIfe

Aldi opening 3830 Prospect

There’s a sad fact about the poorer parts of our city: Lots of people live there, but important businesses, such as grocery stores, tend to avoid them. Kansas City finally broke that pattern in February with the opening of an Aldi grocery store at 39th Street and Prospect. The area has long been considered a “food desert,” and the new Aldi has done much to help correct that. City Council members Melba Curls and Jermaine Reed deserve credit for shepherding this store’s path to existence. Now residents don’t have to rely on overpriced food from convenience stores or block out an hour-plus for a bus commute or reduce their grocery budget by the cost of a cab ride to get to supermarkets in other parts of the city. People deserve quick access to good-quality food. And we’re happy now that more do.

18B

the pitch

best of kansas city 2014

D AY

pitch.com

Best reMnAnt Of KAnsAs cItY’s GlOrY dAYs

kemper ArenA Almost everyone these days associates the West Bottoms with Kemper Arena. For many Kansas Citians, Kemper had been the main reason to visit the sleepy but intriguing enclave at the confluence of the Missouri and Kansas rivers. For anyone lost in the West Bottoms’ confusing streetscape, Kemper’s tall edifice is a way finder. It’s also a reminder of a time when Kansas City fielded, however briefly, four major professional sports teams. In the early 1980s, Kemper was home to the Kansas City Scouts of the National Hockey League (before they left to become the Colorado Rockies) and the Kansas City Kings of the National Basketball Association (before they left for Sacramento). Kemper kept up a useful life after those departures, regularly hosting rock concerts and NCAA basketball tournament games — most notably the Big Eight and later the Big 12 Conference Tournament and the 1988 NCAA final in which the Kansas Jayhawks upset the Oklahoma Sooners. It also hosted the 1976 Republican National Convention, an event that has since eluded Kansas City. Kemper got a taxpayer-funded makeover in 1997, but the city planned poorly for its future after the Sprint Center came into existence. Monster-truck rallies and rodeos, events envisioned for Kemper when the Sprint Center opened, ended up going to the shiny new downtown arena. Now hardly anything happens at Kemper, and the building may not be long for this world. The eponymous family wants it torn down, replaced with a smaller facility to benefit the American Royal. Until then, Kemper Arena remains a visual reminder of KC history.

Best HYpe-prOOf HOnestY

Jim CHAppell CHAppell’s restAurAnt & sports museum 323 Armour Road, 816-421-0002 chappellsrestaurant.com

We could have slotted this citation in pretty much any section of pretty much any year’s Best of Kansas City issue. Chappell’s is, after all, a restaurant (Food) that serves beer (Drink) and draws fans as a classic sports bar (Sports & Recreation), and its shrine to big-league memorabilia is a worthy destination itself (Arts & Entertainment).

But in 2014, we’re all about owner Jim Chappell himself. When he found his business freshly tagged by USA Today as one of the nation’s best sports bars, he didn’t take the usual PR victory lap.

He did exactly the opposite, grousing at an unwanted byproduct of the attention: an obligation to break with tradition and open for the Super Bowl.

The place is usually closed Sundays for sheer lack of business along this quaint stretch of Armour. Chappell shrugged to Kansas City Star reporter Dave Helling: “You can blow off a cannon down here and not hit anybody.”

But good press is good press, so Chappell told the daily that he’d unlock the doors at 3 p.m. game day and see what happened. We admire his crankiness, respect his sense of dutiful enterprise, and tip our hats to what was actually a pretty solid prediction of the Peyton-busting outcome: “The Super Bowl is not the best game of the year,” Chappell told the Star.

“It’s been called the Super Bore.”

Discover nature with us

tze Fran

sn in h i

J ew J

’s

s a b r i n a s ta i r e s

Best Revitalization

JJ’s 900 West 48th Place • 816-561-7136 jjs-restaurant.com

The natural-gas explosion that wiped out JJ’s Restaurant in February 2013 cost one worker her life and represented another in a string of bad-luck events for Jimmy Frantze. The irrepressible restaurateur had made JJ’s into an inviting high-end hangout since 1985. JJ’s had persisted despite Bob Bernstein’s prolonged West Edge construction disaster, and things were starting to look up for Frantze once a developer took the reins of the half-built property across the street, working to put a law firm there. Then JJ’s went up in flames.

Rumors persisted that Frantze might reopen elsewhere on the Plaza or even in midtown, but he will again do business on the corner of 48th Street and Roanoke, returning to the same intersection that had put so many obstacles in front of his old restaurant. The new JJ’s opens later this year.

Conservation Nature Centers Burr Oak Woods

1401 NW Park Road, Blue Springs, MO 64015-7727 816-228-3766 • MDC.MO.GOV/NODE/280

Anita B. Gorman Discovery Center 4750 Troost Ave., Kansas City, MO 64110-1728 816-759-7300 • MDC.MO.GOV/NODE/281

MISSOURI DEPARTMENT OF CONSERVATION MDC.MO.GOV pitch.com

best of kansas city 2014

D AY

the pitch

19B

besttional

recreas league sport

Best Yoga studio best of kc

sports 2014

Maya yoga 215 West 18th Street • 816-679-1053 mayayoga.com

No matter how many Groupons we get for other yoga studios, we always come back to Maya. Owned and operated by Wade and Kathleen Mortenson, who together might have less body fat than any one Kansas Citian, Maya practices the traditions of the first yoga teachers centuries ago, including chanting, ujjayi breathing, and banning water bottles during class. (But if you cheat, they won’t kick you out.) The Mortensons are also into veganism, organic farming and animal rescue — but they’re not all warm and fuzzy. During class, it’s not unusual to feel their firm hands on your back, pushing you deeper into your forward fold. If you can afford the slightly pricier-than-average monthly membership, Maya is the place to get serious about yoga and make it a habit.

Best Place for a Walk or a run

Trolley Track Trail The first sign that Kansas City’s streetcar-expansion project was in trouble was the resistance from Brooksiders when the city considered running the rail down parts of the 6-mile Trolley Track Trail. Mayor Sly James and Councilman Russ Johnson tried to smooth over concerns at a neighborhood meeting last spring, saying the route didn’t have to replace or even run alongside the path, though it was obvious that the city saw the trail as an easy extension route because it’s owned by the Kansas City Area Transportation Authority. The meeting didn’t go well. The message was clear: Don’t mess with the Trolley Track Trail. It’s easy to see why on any given morning or afternoon, when the trail is often occupied by walkers and runners. It’s one of the few logical places, close to the urban core, where joggers can log a few miles on terrain other than knee-killing surfaces like sidewalk or asphalt. Cyclists, baby strollers and dog walkers also access the trail, giving the surface a sense of community that would be hard to replace if taken away.

Best climBing

cliff Drive Rock climbing, like mountain biking, has seemed like an incongruous activity in the confines of Kansas City’s mostly flat terrain. Yet both sports are flourishing. While mountain-biking trails have blossomed, climbing has often remained in the confines of in-

pitch.com

door climbing gyms, like Blue Springs’ Ibex. Of the few outdoor locales for rock climbers, Cliff Drive stands out. Nestled along the Missouri River bluffs in the Historic Northeast, the jagged drops along the southern edge of the eponymous roadway give ample room for outdoor climbers to scale 40- to 50-foot ascents. Other opportunities for climbers to get a little ways off the roadway present themselves along the middle of the Cliff Drive disc-golf course.

Best Park

anTioch Park Merriam

A Johnson County inner-ring suburb isn’t the place one would expect to find one of the metro’s more peaceful settings. Merriam’s Antioch Park is easy enough to miss, situated along Antioch Road just south of a shuttered Kmart near Shawnee Mission Parkway. The park’s north entrance is unassuming and has the look of your staple green space — until you get out of the car and wander down the paths. Like peeling an onion, the farther you travel along Antioch Park’s pathways, the more you find: lake, playgrounds, picnic tables, rolling hills, another lake and so on. It’s far from the Kansas City area’s largest parks, and the recreational opportunities are limited, but Antioch Park is a nod to one of the more picturesque settings in Johnson County.

Best tV deal

invicTa signs wiTh Ufc fighT Pass Kansas City–based MMA promotion Invicta needed a TV presence. That was the missing link for Shannon Knapp’s fledgling all-women fighting group. The matches were already thrilling, with Knapp booking Cristiane “Cyborg” Justino’s return from suspension to destroy opponents and promoting fights with the always exciting crew of Bec Rawlings, Leslie Smith and Michelle Waterson (among others). In June, she signed a deal with the biggest dog in the fight game: the UFC. Invicta’s fight cards would be broadcast live on the UFC’s Fight Pass digital streaming service (the Netflix of MMA). With subscribers in 155 countries, the deal puts Invicta in front of more eyeballs than ever — exactly what Knapp and her fighters deserve.

Best sPorts tWitter PersonalitY

Joel eMbiiD @JoelEmbiid

Former Kansas Jayhawk Joel Embiid has a lot of time on his hands as he

best of kansas city 2014

D AY

the pitch

21B

Best FamIlY &

60 Acres of U-PICK PUMPKINS and FUN! September 20th to October 31st

regIster onlIne todaY!

ChIldren's

Yoga

$2 OFF

poseYogastudIo.Com

Single Day Passes Promo Code - Pitch

Yoga for You and Your Kids to FIt Your schedule

PUrChASe TICKeTS ONlINe:

carolynscountrycousins.com

East Side of Metcalf 103 Shopping Center ° 6840 W. 105th Street ° (816)868.1081

LIVE DJ • PARTY LIGHTING • NEW SOUND SYSTEM

SAT & SUN

9 : 30pm-1am

Ward ParkWa y Lanes 1523 W 89th St, Kansas City, MO • 816.363.2700 • wardparkwaylanes.com

® The The 20142014 ruCkuS ruCkuS ®

unique iS An unDerSTATemenT.

unique iS An unDerSTATemenT.

13020 West 63rd St. Shawnee KS 66216 “You can’t buy from (913) 631-1111 a nicer bunch of guys!” just 2.5 miles west of I-35 or 3 miles I-435 Shawnee Mission Parkway AND NEVER uSE THE powersports.honda.com ALWAYS WEAR A HELMET, EYE PROTECTIONLocated AND PROTECTIVE CLOTHING. NEVER RIDE uNDEReast THEofINFLuENCE OF DRuGS OR ALCOHOL,

STREET AS A RACETRACK. OBEY THE LAW AND READ THE OWNER’S MANuAL THOROuGHLY. For rider training information or to locate a rider training course near you, call the Motorcycle Safety Foundation ALWAYS WEAR A HELMET, AND PROTECTIVE NEVER RIDE UNDER THE INFLUENCE OF DRUGS OR ALCOHOL, AND NEVER USE THE STREET AS A RACETRACK. OBEY THE at powersports.honda.com 1-800-446-9227. Ruckus® is a registered trademark of Honda Motor EYE Co., PROTECTION Ltd. ©2014 American Honda MotorCLOTHING. Co., Inc. (4/14) ® LAW AND READ THE OWNER’S MANU AL THOROUGHLY. For rider training information or to locate a rider training course near you, call the Motorcycle Safety Foundation at 1-800-446-9227. Ruckus is a registered trademark of Honda Motor Co., Ltd. ©2014 American Honda Motor Co., Inc. (4/14)

powersports.honda.com A HELMET, EYE PROTECTION AND PROTECTIVE CLOTHING. NEVER RIDE uNDER THE INFLuENCE OF DRuGS OR ALCOHOL, AND NEVER uSE THE 22B t h e –pSTREET i t c hAS A RACETRACK. best of k a nALWAYS s a s WEAR city 2 0 1 4 D AY pitch.com OBEY THE LAW AND READ THE OWNER’S MANuAL THOROuGHLY. For rider training information or to locate a rider training course near you, call the Motorcycle Safety Foundation 10195703 4C 1-800-446-9227.

Ruckus is a registered trademark of Honda Motor Co., Ltd. ©2014 American Honda Motor Co., Inc. (4/14) MY ’14 KeyatModel Product Admats ®

sports

best of kc 2014 recovers from a foot injury that may 4 201 — if not all — sideline him for much of his rookie season with the NBA’s Philadelphia 76ers. One way he’s taking advantage of adversity: mastering the art of 140-character social media.

So far, he’s already something like a Twitter Jedi. Embiid has used the platform to attempt to recruit (unsuccessfully) LeBron James to the Sixers.

He also tried to do a little personal recruiting with Rihanna and Kim Kardashian, backing off the latter after discovering that she’d married Kanye West. A guy’s gotta try. More recently, he has aimed a little lower, trying to up his 2k Sports video-game rating. Meanwhile, his 355,000 followers are well-entertained.

tering noises — a sinking feeling perfectly summed up by the John Sleezer photo posted to The Kansas City Star website not long before the first pitch. The beat shooter had spotted a pair of turkey vultures on the Kauffman Stadium grounds, perched atop adjacent pennants advertising the team (and its deal with Fox Sports). “Be Royal,” the f lags commanded. “Be real,” the ba ld birds seemed to taunt. Of course, the vultures were seated, not circling, because the home

Best College BasketBall player

Perry ellis Was Perry Ellis one of Danny Manning’s Miracles? Didn’t he suit up next to Drew, Kirk and Nick? Didn’t he and Scot Pollard paint each other’s nails? Wasn’t he just backing up the Morris twins? Or was it T-Rob? It seems like Perry Ellis has been in Lawrence forever. The number 34 sometimes seems more like this player’s age than his jersey number,

Best “Who’s the man noW, dog?” sports moment?

Chiefs fans Chant for the royals

Best photo of a sign from the Universe

John sleezer’s ugly birds Kauffman Stadium, September 21

The Royals’ last home series of the season started with two dropped games against the Detroit Tigers.

The first loss was a teeth-gnashing embarrassment, the second a series of botches that left a whole city sharpening every spare needle to thrust into every Ned Yost voodoo doll. What had been an enthusiastic conversation about the Royals heading to the playoffs now threatened to once again become the usual mute shrugs and sput-

Best College footBall CoaCh Alex Gordon had some Royal moments.

k a n s a s c i t y r oya l s

Heading into the fourth quarter of the season opener at Arrowhead Stadium, the Chiefs were down 20–3 to the Tennessee Titans. It was precisely during that brief intermission that Kansas City sports fans gave official notice to KC’s pro-football franchise that their run at the forefront of our sports mind had ended, at least for now. As fedup fans filed toward the exits and the parking lot, they joined together in an emphatic chant: “Let’s go, Royals! Let’s go, Royals!” The reign of red and gold was over. This was, for the moment, a Royals town. And fans let the Chiefs, Clark Hunt and Andy Reid know that they should get comfortable with being an afterthought — as they usually are in division standings. Winning really does cure all evils.

a stink about it. He left the University of Miami for Mizzou trailing a recruiting scandal, with a 43–69 record in the ACC, so the hire was always something of a head-scratcher.

When Haith’s Tigers rolled to a 30–5 record and a Big 12 championship in the coach’s first season, doubts faded. But then the Tigers — a No. 2 seed — got bounced in the first round of the tourney, a defeat echoed the next year as well. Year three saw MU go 23–12, only to have its NCAA Tournament invitation get lost in the mail. (The Tigers lost in the second round of the NIT.) That added up to Haith’s not having a win in the NCAA Tournament in six years. Which is our long way of saying we’re stoked about Kim Anderson. He won backto-back MIAA championships and a national championship in 2014 at Central Missouri. Better yet, Anderson is a Mizzou guy. He was born in Sedalia and played for the Tigers in the mid-1970s, leading the team to a Big Eight title in 1976. He’s also a part of Norm Stewart’s coaching tree. So, yeah: a return to tradition in Columbia (and a bargain at $1.1 million a season for Anderson’s salary).

team wasn’t quite dead after all: Royals over Tigers, 5–2. The buzzards, we presume, are wintering next door at Arrowhead.

Best College footBall player

Maty Mauk Maty Mauk can sling it. The Missouri Tigers quarterback came out chucking the pigskin against the University of Central Florida as Mizzou rolled to a 38-10 victory. The sophomore signal caller finished with four touchdown passes, and he’s primed for a whole lot more. At press time, Mauk had already thrown 14 touchdowns and 978 yards. And his record as a starter improved to 6–2. It’s just the start of a showcase season for Mauk.

though Ellis — shockingly — is only a junior. But that just speaks to his impact since arriving on campus; Ellis has been integral to the Jayhawks for as long as we can remember.

Last season, he averaged 13.5 points and 6.7 boards, and we expect those numbers to jump as he matures into a veteran.

Best College BasketBall CoaCh

kiM anderson Thank you, Tulsa. You did the University of Missouri a favor when you hired men’s basketball coach Frank Haith. Yes, there’s the faint patina of embarrassment when a non-power-conference school hires away a prominent position. But Haith’s tenure at Mizzou always had pitch.com

gary Pinkel university of Missouri In 2005, Missouri football coach Gary Pinkel appeared to be at the end of his rope. The Tigers had barely sneaked into the Independence Bowl after another disappointing regular season. They looked to get pasted by South Carolina, a feeling reinforced by an early 21-0 lead for the Gamecocks. Pinkel’s teams, up to that point, had always underperformed.

But the Tigers stormed back for a narrow victory. The cachet of winning a bowl game over a Steve Spurrier team might have spared Pinkel’s job.

The win was the start of a remarkable tenure of success for the Tigers, who became the dominant force in the Big 12’s North Division. Then Missouri left for the SEC, a move that pundits speculated might expose Pinkel’s team as unprepared for the vigor of Southern-style football. But with two years in college football’s toughest conference, Pinkel has already shown that he can bridge the recruiting and performance gap in the SEC. The Tigers reached the SEC championship game last year, picking up a Cotton Bowl championship weeks later.

best of kansas city 2014

D AY

the pitch

23B

best of kc 2014

get waisted. free with registration.

Presented By:

P p fitnesscrawl.com Keep moving, Kansas City!

Best Royal

Alex Gordon As we write this, the Royals are in playoff contention. In. Playoff. Contention.

We haven’t been able to say that since 1985, and Alex Gordon, a legit American League MVP candidate, is part of the reason for that good feeling. OK, his stats are pretty pedestrian: .264 batting average, 71 RBIs and 19 home runs (as of press time). But this season has been about feeling. And for Royals fans who have long needed someone to shower with MVP chants, no one else in the lineup came close to Gordon’s intangible value.

Best Chief

JAmAAl ChArles T h i s s ea s on st a r te d le s s t h a n ideally for the Chiefs. After a road game against the hated Broncos, the team was down seven starters, owing to injury or suspension. The most valuable among the injured: Jamaal Charles. Yeah, Knile Davis is a solid backup, but Charles is the difference between a playoff contender (we know, we know — from slim to none) and a new playoff drought (not to mention a wasted fantasy-football season).

THANKS KANSAS CITY

ST BoWLINg BE r fo 3 p To S u g N TI vo for of our ALLEY & for BEINg pArT fAmILY for 58 YEArS! - mISSIoN BoWL AY 5399 mArTW 205 6 6 mISSIoN, KS 000 .7 913.432

24B

the pitch

D AY

“Gronk-like.” That’s all you need to know about the talent of Chiefs secondyear tight end Travis Kelce, who missed all of the 2013 season due to microfracture surgery. The 24-year-old former Cincinnati Bearcat showed early flashes of that Gronkowski comparison, reeling in a 69-yard touchdown pass in the preseason opener and a 43-yard TD in the second. The 6-foot-5-inch, 260-pound Kelce is a playmaker, and his ceiling is so high that he’s reportedly the reason that the Chiefs didn’t aggressively go after wide receivers in the offseason. In the Chiefs’ week-one loss, Kelce played just 20 snaps — a mistake that Andy Reid likely won’t make again.

U.s. soCCer FAns in The Power & liGhT disTriCT The Power & Light District’s Live Block was awash in red, white and blue for the World Cup games of the U.S. men’s national soccer team. There wasn’t a better place to watch the tense matches in the Group of Death. During its broadcasts, ESPN frequently cut to shots of the rabid KC crowd in the living room of the P&L, watching hometown hero Matt Besler and his Sporting KC teammate Graham Zusi on the field in Brazil. The nation — and the world — quickly found out just how much KC loves soccer. We might be living in the U.S. soccer capital after all.

Best spoRt

dom dwyer Even when Sporting Kansas City won the Major League Soccer championship in 2013, fans were often frustrated that the team seemed to lack a deft and reliable goal scorer. Kei Kamara missed dozens of solid scoring chances for

WL.Com ISSIoNBo

best of kansas city 2014

TrAvis KelCe

Best patRiotiC Bandwagon

Best spoRting Kansas City playeR

Er ST. 1020 S. WEAv66 oLATHE, KS 0961 913.782.027 m

Best hope foR the futuRe

every one goal he buried in the net.

The team spent big money on Omar Bravo and Claudio Bieler, but neither import integrated well with Sporting KC’s system. And Dom Dwyer? The Englishman looked, at times, like he would never crack the starting lineup in Kansas City, so he was banished for a while to minor league affiliate Orlando City. But this year, Dwyer is in the chase for the league lead in goals.

Though he might be the team member with the worst hair, he scores with style and panache. During Sporting KC’s August 16 tilt against Toronto, Dwyer was tapped to take a penalty kick, which the forward blasted with a left-footed shot that hit the top of the net with enough force to look like it had missed. Take a ball to your local soccer field and see if you can hit the top of the net from the penalty spot once in 10 tries.

B r o o k e Va n d e V e r

Jan. 24 - feB. 6, 2015

sports

pitch.com

soCCer Can we call something the “best sport”? Isn’t that overly broad? Yes and yes. But: Kansas City has three championship teams in one professional sport at the same damn time.

best of kc 2014

sports

Sporting Kansas City is the reigning champion of Major League Soccer. FC Kansas City won the National Women’s Soccer League title in August.

And the Missouri Comets are Major Arena Soccer champs. Has that ever happened in any other American city in the history of professional sports?

Not that we could find. Kansas City has always been a Chiefs town (sorry,

Best lAst seAson

P SUMMER GUIDE

Dermatologist and longtime Royals fanalyst Rany Jazayerli picked either the best possible time to call it quits or the worst. As we put this issue to bed, the team had endured a final home stand that was part humiliation, part

TOURNAMENT

JUNE 4, 2015

rany JaZayerli ranyontheroyals.com

GOLF

MiNor Park

11215 Holmes Rd, Kansas city mo 64131

JUST 10 MINUTES NORTH OF THE KANSAS SPEEDWAY

FALC S O KYDI

VING

N TE

EXPE RI LIFE ENCE TH TIME E TH RIL BY SKYD IVE W MAKING L OF A SKYD ITH T A TA N IV H A GR ING TEA E FALCO DEM EAT M N .

I T GIFT ALSO ANN FO IVE M GIFT RSARY, R A BIRT AKES OR S HDAY CERT PECI , IFICA A TES FOR ARE L EVENT. MOR AVAI LABL E INF E.

AM

ORM ATION

Matt Besler isn’t waving goodbye.

Royals; you know we love you), and that’s not likely to change in the near future. But for now, Kansas City is known nationally as the soccer capital of the States.

Best AssurAnce thAt Athletes WAnt to stAy in Kc

Matt Besler and GrahaM Zusi re-siGn with sportinG KC Remember the 2010 FIFA Men’s World Cup when Sporting KC was just starting to get heat locally. We all had a collective chest-bump, aww-yeah! shouting moment when ESPN aired footage of fans watching the U.S. team on TV in the Power & Light District.

Good times. This time around, Sporting KC stars Graham Zusi and Matt Besler (who, by the way, is from here) were praised all over the world for their work with Team USA. Zusi and Besler went from local heroes admired by other MLS clubs to serious targets by better, erm, more foreign soccer leagues. Yet, Zusi and Besler agreed to sign long-term extensions with SKC. Yeah, we know the contracts don’t mean these guys will be in SKC blue forever. But if we ever needed proof that maybe Kansas City was a place where top athletes actually wanted to play, we finally got it.

CALL

816.561.6061

913.205.1224 www.falconskydiving.com FALCONSKYDIVERS

OR VISIT

sigh of relief. Nothing so novel, except that, for the first time in a generation, a playoff berth was on the line — and Jazayerli was preparing to cap his Rany on the Royals blog. As usual for most of that generation, Jazayerli wrote about those games with his unique blend of erudite calm, statistical authority and the reasonless passion of someone who has taken gut punch after gut punch for the thing he loves. But his posts this season have also been hall-of-fame stuff, thanks to the Royals’ ascent toward something like a team to be proud of. Yes, we’ve thanked the good doctor in this space for his writing more than once, but he deserves one more. Our favorite: his beautiful account of Sung Woo Lee’s trip from South Korea to the K. “For twenty years I’ve been trying to make the Royals play better by writing about them analytically, by bringing a scientific approach to baseball and using it to show what the Royals are doing wrong and how they could do things better. And for twenty years maybe I’ve been doing it wrong. …

Maybe what the Royals needed wasn’t someone to explain to them that OBP matters, but someone who loved them so much that he’d fly 6,000 miles to see them play.” Yes, but also someone a little closer to home who has given a lot more than he’s gotten over the years.

pitch.com

best of kansas city 2014

D AY

the pitch

25B

26B

the pitch

best of kansas city 2014

D AY

pitch.com

best of kc

Goods & services

Best Hairstylist

Best FasHion Designer

Jessica Mantooth the calico Beard and Mercantile

anna runa

818 West 17th Street • 816-701-6315 thecalicobeard.com

Finding a hairstylist you like is tough.

Finding one you trust is even harder.

But the Calico Beard’s Jessica Mantooth meets both criteria — and more. She reads people. If you don’t want to do small talk, Mantooth doesn’t engage in small talk (other than offering a beer from her salon’s well-stocked mini-fridge). If you’d like to unload your latest troubles, Mantooth is ready to commiserate. Above all, she is looking out for you. If you come in demanding Zooey Deschanel bangs, she asks you how, exactly, you plan on maintaining them. And when it’s revealed that you have no plan — just this burning desire to change — she guides you in a direction you’re less likely to regret. (Though, if you’re serious about change, Mantooth has done it all, and happily meets your needs.) She’s practical. Never does Mantooth’s advice include telling you to go out and buy raw Turkish honey and massage it into your scalp or persuade you to spend more on shampoo than your monthly car payment. But more than anything, she makes you feel comfortable. She doesn’t rush the appointment. She doesn’t talk about products. She’s the stylist you want to drink with, the one you wouldn’t mind running into at Costco. And when you leave her chair, you feel changed: a better, fresher version of yourself. With a killer cut.

Have you noticed more colorful bow ties lately on a few fashionable men around town? If you have, and if you like the resurgence as much as we do, thank designer Anna Gudmundsson.

In 2011, while she was still enrolled in the University of Missouri–Kansas City’s fashion-design program, Gudmundsson began creating custom neckwear for a photographer friend who’d asked. Soon, she was also taking requests from grooms and groomsmen for her neat, quirkily patterned bow ties, and it became clear that she’d need to make things a bit more official. Gudmundsson decided to call her business Anna Runa, and she built an Etsy shop for her creations — just in time for The New York Times to feature her in a 2012 article on the resurrection of this particular menswear trend. These days, business is booming, and Gudmundsson’s online shop features bow ties ($35-$40), neckties ($45-$50), pocket squares ($20), suspenders ($50) and even baby bow ties and doggie bow ties. Our favorite: The “KC Pride” bow tie, in royal blue, classily imprinted with the initials of our fair city.

Best ClotHes

donna’s dress shop 1410 West 39th Street • 816-931-0022 donnasdressshop.com

It’s easy for a newcomer to Donna’s Dress Shop to feel a bit like Alice, freshly fallen

angel a c. bond

2014

Donna’s Dress Shop filled our closet. into the rabbit hole. The sweet space on 39th Street might not be departmentstore-size, but Donna — yes, there’s an actual Donna, and she’s often found bustling around, looking fabulous — has curated a selection so individual and necessary that a shopper could not possibly want for more. Donna’s vintage collection is always rotating and always tasteful and creative. Who knows where she unearthed that Diana Ross–worthy one-shoulder ruffled, red cocktail dress or why she has decided to part with it for less than $30. Better to buy it than ask questions. Things come and go quickly at Donna’s, and not just the one-of-akind vintage pieces. New stock comes in every week from high-quality imitation vintage brands carrying full-size runs, so there’s bound to be something for everyone. Local fashion-design team pitch.com

Girl Friday sells its collection here, too.

And, oh, the accessories: Donna’s offerings would be the envy of any hip grandma. It is, indeed, a wonderland.

Best aCCessories

owl + Mouse textile designs 1600 Genessee, Suite 160 • 816-651-9620 owlandmouse.etsy.com

Alice Youngblood and Cristin Llewellyn have perfected the design-cut-dye-sew dance. Their talent shines in the men’s ties, women’s scarves, baby hats and decorative pillows in their West Bottoms shop, Owl + Mouse. Youngblood and Llewellyn, who met while studying fiber at the Kansas City Art Institute, launched their business five years ago and set up shop in the Livestock

best of kansas city 2014

D AY

the pitch

27B

best of kc 2014

goods & services Exchange Building a couple of years back. The duo’s simple hand-drawn, nature-inspired motifs combine with organic fabrics, vibrant color and highquality craftsmanship to land coveted spots in our closets.

Best Gifts

Foldedpigs etsy.com/shop/foldedpigs

There’s something oddly romantic about eating Fruit Loops out of a ceramic bowl picturing a bright-blue anatomical brain and cursive text that reads, “I love you more than zombies love brains.” Ceramic artist Meredith Host’s quirky dinnerware line, Foldedpigs (named for what she calls her version of ponytails), screen-prints witty puns and simple decals on restaurant ware.

Mugs, plates and bowls — which Host decorates in her Kansas City studio — have landed on the pages of Every Day with Rachael Ray and inside New York boutiques, rescuing stumped gift-givers every where. Popular items in her line include dipping bowls and espresso cups featuring a skull-and-crossbones image and the one that might be our favorite: a dessert plate with an anatomical heart and the command “Eat your heart out.”

Best Cookware

Vita CraFt FaCtory outlet

Best PlaCe to stoCk UP YoUr kitChen

BlaCkwell’s thriFt shop 1316 East 63rd Street • 816-444-9990

Blackwell’s Thrift Shop is easy to miss. It helps to look for the shelves of brilliantly colored glassware and ceramics glistening through the storefront windows. This unassuming business has occupied the same red-tile-roofed building for 33 years, and many of the secondhand goods for sale inside appear to be in the same excellent shape now as they were when the store opened. Buying good-quality used items beats paying full price for cheaply made junk, and the former is what you find here: clean, artfully arranged and clearly priced cookware, utensils, small appliances and dinnerware, much of which dates back to an era when things were made to last. We recognize Corningware casserole dishes from our Grandma’s cabinet, as well as funkier finds like a Schick Easy Shine electric shoegrooming kit. In addition, the store is stocked with reasonably priced jewelry, knickknacks and home décor. (Look elsewhere for clothing and furniture.) Give yourself plenty of time to browse, and bring cash or your checkbook.

FREE STUFF! CONCERT TICKETS, CDs, DVDs, MOVIE PASSES, APPAREL & MORE go to...

pitch.com/KansasCity/FreeStuff 10-ACRE

PUMPKIN PATCH

CIDER MILL

AMAZING 10-ACRE

STORE OPEN 7-DAYS-A-WEEK

Corn Maze

®

& Countr y Store Frankenzombie SINCE 1977

14730 K68 Highway, Louisburg, KS 66053 (Only 20 Minutes From Kansas City)

Hours, Shopping, & Event Info:

www.louisburgcidermill.com 913-837-5202

Pumpkin Patch & Maze Open Through November 2

• Puzzling Clues • Jump Pillow • Teepees • Farm Animals • Straw Fort • Play Area

Fri. & Sat. 7pm to 10pm

Bring a flashlight & go through the maze IN THE DARK!

• Wagon Ride • Hill Slide • Live Music & Bonfire on Selected Evenings

Friday & Saturday: 10am to 10pm Sunday: 10am to 6pm Weekdays: Noon to 5pm

Best fUnCtional art

the City girl Farm

5726 Nieman, Shawnee • 913-631-6265

thecitygirlfarm.com

shop.vitacraftfactoryoutlet.com

If we had $1,000 for a footstool, we’d buy Betty. At first glance, she looks like a live chicken — an exceptionally beautiful live chicken. In reality, Sally Jane Linville, of the City Girl Farm, crafts the plush footstool by hand-felting fiber into feathers, turning wood into egg-shaped structures, and casting sculptures of chicken feet and beaks in bronze.

Betty, standing 17 inches tall and weighing in at 25 pounds, is a hit at local and regional festivals, including the Plaza Art Fair. So are her pals, including Pearl, LeRoy, Flossy and Shirley. Linville, who was raised on a central Kansas farm and now lives in Kansas City, hatched the product idea in her final furniture-design studio at Kansas State University, with inspiration from French artist François-Xavier Lalanne’s classic sheep ottoman. Henny and Penny emerged, and Linville has been placing fancy, fun and fake chickens in living rooms ever since.

We pulled up to a dated building in an industrial area feeling a bit skeptical. We left with the bestperforming sta in less-steel pots and pans we’ve ever owned. Vita Craft Factory Outlet offers deep discounts on cookware with slight scratches and dents, as well as on discontinued merchandise. The outlet sits at company headquarters for Vita Craft, a 75-year-old company with fair reason to call itself “manufacturers of the world’s finest cookware.” The company’s history includes wide distribution in Japan and serving as cookware of choice at Miss America pageants and to the Rockefellers, the story goes. For us, the selling points i nc lude i nduc t ion cook wa re, a lifetime warranty and thorough inspections. Now under Japanese ownership, the cookware remains a made-in-the-USA product, handcrafted in Shawnee.

GET SOME

                         pitch.com

best of kansas city 2014

D AY

the pitch

29B

WHere cooL dogs sTaY

Thank You

Kansas City The PreMier bAllrOOM ChiropraCtiC dAnce STudiO thanKs you in the Midwest including Tango, Salsa, for your vote in the

"Best of KC" Competition

Foxtrot, Waltz, Swing, and many more

come alone or bring a friend, beginner or experienced, we have something for everyone!

to all the readers for the nomination as

BesT PeT Boarding PeT daYcare!

7200 Wyandotte St. KCMO

816.361.3388

poochesparadise.com

mention this ad for a free Chair massage with your initial visit 4510 Belleview Suite 100 Kansas City, MOÂ 64111 (816)753-4600 www.kansascitychiropractic.com

Alexis

Conveniently located between The Plaza & Westport

Third Generation

Since 1927

ns Walk-im e Welco

Signature Service Massage

9050 Metcalf Ave | Overland Park KS 66212 913-642-7410

DOWNTOWN

1522 McGee Saturday: 5:10 pm Sunday: 9 am, 10:45 am and 5 pm 1508 Grand Ave. Sunday, 10:15 am

rezdowntown.org

is celebrating 44 years!

ONE CHURCH with four area locations

with a fantastic October special...

$55 for 60 minute massage New LocatioN! 11805 N. 62Nd St. StE 100 ShawNEE, KS 66216 ( 1 blocK North of advaNcEd auto PartS, corNEr of 62Nd PlacE & Quivira ) 913.400.3515 // 913.940.8874

coMPliMENtary bottlEd watEr

MoN-fri 10aM-6PM Saturday by aPPoiNtMENt oNly 30B

the pitch

best of kansas city 2014

D AY

pitch.com

A diverse, vital and growing church, worshipping God, building community and sharing life

WEST

(OLATHE)

24000 W. Valley Parkway Sunday: 9 am, 10:45 am and 5 pm

rezwest.org

LEAWOOD 13720 Roe Ave. Saturday: 5 pm Sunday: 7:45 am, 9 am, 10:45 am and 5 pm

cor.org

BLUE SPRINGS 601 NE Jefferson St. Sunday: 9 am and 10:45 am

rezbluesprings.org

DOWNLOAD

FINDIT VIDEO & LOYALTY

TEXT “STAYLOCAL” TO 80802

WATCH VIDEOS ON PLACES TO EAT, DRINK, SHOP, PLAY AND LIVE.

FREEBIESAND/OR AND/ORPOINTS POINTS WHEN EARNEARN FREEBIES WHEN YOU SHARE, CHECK IN , OR SCAN CODES YOU SHARE, CHECK IN, OR SCAN CODES

or online: FINDitKC.com

TEXT AND DATA RATES MAY APPLY. FINDIT, AND IT’S FAMILY, MAY SEND 2-4 TEXTS PER MONTH DEPENDING ON PREFERENCES. FINDIT DOES NOT SELL PERSONAL INFORMATION.

Holiday inn Hotel

WE ARE THE

HOTEL WITH PERSONALITY 1215 WYANDOTTE ST, KANSAS CITY, MO 64105 TEL: 816-421-8888 | FAX: 816-817-1883 FOR MORE INFO GO TO HIALADDIN.COM

pitch.com

best of kansas city 2014

D AY

the pitch

31B

More than a Record Store!

Kansas City’s Finest Comic Shop

1415 W 39th St KC, MO 6411 (816) 756-0014

7932 Santa Fe Dr OP, KS 66204 (931) 962-0014

COMING SOON! COLUMBIA,MO

I’m telling you,real deal it’s the

What kind of comic did you get?

Yoga. Massage. Pilates. esthetics & skincare. reiki. life coaching. WorkshoPs.

Unique piercings Experienced staff Largest selection of jewelry in Kansas City

It feels good to feel good

1624 B Westport Rd, KCMO 64111

15053 Nall Avenue, Leawood, KS 66223 • 913-217-7153 LotusYogaKC@gmail.com • LotusYogaKC.com

816.561.1802 32B

the pitch

best of kansas city 2014

D AY

pitch.com

best of kc 2014

goods & services

chris mullins

them or ask the mobile mill to come to you. And as the Urban Lumber Co. cuts wood, it builds community, connecting woodworkers and people with an appreciation for trees through events such as its Sawmill and Local Maker Showcase, where visitors wander through the lumber showroom, admiring handmade wooden items.

The Folk Store strung us out.

Best Place to Meet Players

TableTop Game and Hobby 6990 West 105th Street, Overland Park 913-962-4263 • tabletopgameandhobby.com

Your Friday night needs some strategy. Tonight, you’re rolling the dice.

Tonight, you’re leaving the PlayStation behind. Tonight, you’re accusing your boyfriend of … being a robot.

Tonight, friend, you’re part of a quiet movement, a spike in nonelectronic play that has sent board-game sales surging by double digits every year since 2003. So unfold your latest purchase from TableTop Game and Hobby and have at it. This indispensable shop thrives in a market dominated by online retailers, thanks to some assets that the Internet doesn’t offer. Far from being the forbidding hobbyist dungeon of the 1990s, with sun-faded posters and a single, socially maladroit clerk hiding from customers in the back room, TableTop is clean, welllighted and cannily organized by employees who are exceptionally helpful to newcomer and veteran enthusiast alike. And you’d better believe there’s a spacious playroom, where customers are invited to set up their gear and socialize, often well past closing time.

If you’re spending more time at your kitchen table paying bills than building battlefields, it’s time to get out here and meet a few new robots.

Best suBurBan Destination

Green expressions 203 West Dennis Avenue, Olathe 913-780-4180 • greenexpressionskc.com

Olathe isn’t just a community dominated by big-box retail and chain restaurants. It’s also home to some

amazing shops, including the mustvisit Green Expressions. This antique mall sells an array of vintage gets, as well as newly repurposed and handmade goods crafted by the store’s vendors. In addition to unconventional home décor and kitschy furnishings, Expressions also houses a totally stacked vinyl shop called Hi-Fi Records. After getting lost in this particular cul-de-sac for a few hours, you’re bound to wander out with a killer used album, a quirky sign and maybe even a piece of handmade jewelry — all of which you likely wouldn’t have found anywhere else in the metro.

Best Place for HarD WooD

THe Urban lUmber Co. 7200 East Highway 40 • 816-888-7947 urbanlumberco.com

The Urban Lumber Co. began turning other people’s trash into treasure back in 2005, when woodworker Tim O’Neill started sawing trees — discarded from Kansas City yards — into lumber. In mid-May, the Urban Lumber Co. opened a new showroom in a former auto-parts warehouse near U.S. Highway 40 and Interstate 435.

Here, you can peruse racks of locally harvested, kiln- and air-dried planks and learn the history of each board.

In addition to the types of wood — alder, ash, black walnut, elm, hackberry, hickory, honeylocust, maple, mulberry, sycamore — are labels that identify the locale where the original tree once grew. (Many of the fourby-fours, some of them with live-cut edges, come from Kansas City Parks and Recreation land.) In addition to its retail sales, Urban Lumber Co. offers services, including custom milling conducted with its trailermounted band mill. Bring your log to

Best Place to Give tWo Plucks

THe Folk sTore

Lawrence's one stop shop for all your vape needs

including 69 flavors to sample!

509 Delaware • 816-221-3655 folkalliance.org

Any moderately passionate guitarist feels a jolt all the way down to his capo at the thought of handling a vintage Gibson. It’s a rarer, hardier and very likely hairier sort who thrills to the prospect of jamming on a 1927 Gibson TB4 banjo. And that’s just the sort you’re bound to run into at the River Market headquarters of the nonprofit Folk Alliance International, which doubles as the Folk Store. Here, enthusiasts of folk, roots and traditional music have their very own emporium for vintage and just plain unusual stringed instruments.

The shelves sport a dozen jug bands’ worth of dulcimers, two-stringed cigar-box guitars, lap steels, ukuleles and West African kora lutes. Some are practically museum pieces (and just as beautiful), yet all of the stock nearly vibrates with possibility. The knowledgeable people at the store can answer your questions about the history and function of the instruments without making you feel like anything less than a peer. That’s great for those of us whose appreciation runs high but whose folk-fu is a little more Emmet Otter than Alan Lomax.

13 E. 8th St. • Lawrence, KS • 785-424-7440 www.maverickvapors.com

Dogs World of FUN

Best free service

sTd CliniC aT THe kCmo HealTH deparTmenT 2400 Troost • 816-513-6379 kcmo.gov/health/clinic-services/std-clinic/

Let’s stipulate that getting tested for sexually transmitted diseases is an undelightful way to spend an afternoon. And in a perfect world, everybody would practice safe sex.

(Actually, in a perfect world, there wouldn’t be STDs. But we digress.)

The fact is that most sexually active people sooner or later find themselves in need of an urgent STD checkup, whether due to the arrival of some new genital discomfort or pitch.com

DAYCARE BOARDING & GROOMING MON–FRI: 6:30AM–5:45PM SAT–SUN: 9:30AM–3PM

1220 W. 31st Street, Kansas City, MO 64108 816.931.5822 dogsworldoffun.com

best of kansas city 2014

D AY

the pitch

33B

F O L LO W U S O N I N S TA G R A M

209 westport road kansas city, mo 736 massachusetts st. lawrence, ks

& AvAiLAbLe At...

More information 816.914.4886 /deemdead

100 W. Pine Warrensburg, MO

2nd SW 4th St, Unit A Lee’s Summit, MO

816.974.7662

IronEagleCustoms.com

Witch way to Kansas City’s

BEST selection of

fetish shoes & lingerie?

Hall of fame

Fast • Friendly • Family Family Owned FOr 38 years

COmplete autO serviCe

thank yOu kansas City!

C A ll f or A N A ppoiNtm eNt

816.221.4433 14th & Burlington, nKC NorthtownAutoSer vice.net

34B

the pitch

best of kansas city 2014

D AY

Vast selection of

vaporizers & smoking accessories!

8401 E. Truman Rd Kansas CiTy, MO

816.252.3370 9am-midnight ~ seven days a week Strip • Zydot • Stat • monkey whiZZ • feild kitS • home teSt kitS

pitch.com

best of kc 2014

goods & services so you can indulge your inner child by playing one of the theater’s retro arcade games. And while channeling your youth is all well and good, don’t forget the adult you — the theater is stocked with loads of craft beer.

Best FlorIst

Trapp and company 4110 Main • 816-931-6940 trappandcompany.com

Kansas City’s oldest and most exclusive social event is the Jewel Ball, a debutante showcase (and fundraiser for the Nelson-Atkins Museum of

robert hoops

just the slow-burning terror that a recent partner might have been carrying something bad. After the horrifying Google image searches comes the Google testing-center searches, which can be terrifying in a different way — many charge $100 and up for a visit. Here’s all you need to know: You can walk into the Kansas City, Missouri, Health Department and get confidentially tested for chlamydia, gonorrhea, syphilis, trichomoniasis and HIV. (See the website for clinic hours.)

Within 10 days, you have your results. And it costs you zero dollars.

Actually, if you’re a KCMO resident,

Screenland Armour lit us up. you’ve already paid for it, through local taxes. How satisfying, to see your tax dollars at work in a way that directly benefits you. The only thing more satisfying? A clean bill of health.

Best Place to emBrace Your Inner chIld

Screenland armour 408 Armour Road, North Kansas City 816-994-7380 • screenland.com/armour

If you’re looking for a destination where you can watch some of your favorite childhood films, go north, dear soul. The Screenland Armour, in North Kansas City, always has a stellar schedule that includes the kind of weirdo, vintage faves that your preteen self geeked out over, such as Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 2 and Labyrinth. (At least now, as an adult, you understand why you felt that awkward tw inge when David Bowie and his crystal balls appeared on the big screen.) Make sure you arrive at the theater at least 30 minutes before a film starts

Art) that boasts appropriately exquisite floral decorations. You can thank the dean of local florists, Bob Trapp, for that. The tall, imposing Trapp has been the premier florist in town for 45 years and has overseen the Jewel Ball’s décor for the past quarter–century. He employs a team of eight floral designers, but for a few of his old-guard clients, the man still rolls up his sleeves and does the arrangements himself. “The business has changed a lot in 45 years,” Trapp says, “and the f loral budgets for weddings are larger than ever.” But Trapp is a shrewd businessman, and he knows that no sale is too small.

The more petite items at Trapp — we like the beautiful little arrangements already assembled in glass containers, for $18, that are ready to grab and go — are ideal for anyone who’s in a hurry or on a budget but doesn’t want to arrive somewhere emptyhanded. When you give Trapp’s flowers to your date, your partner or just to yourself when you need a little color in your day, your recipient is the belle of the ball. pitch.com

best of kansas city 2014

D AY

the pitch

35B

RAYGUN THE GREATEST STORE IN THE UNIVERSE!

1803 BALTIMORE AVE KC, MO 64108 raygunsite.com

I don’t always vape

but

whe

n

I do I CH O O S ...

E

Vapur West!

7703 NW Prairie VieW road KaNsas City Mo 64151 816-399-2606

Th an ks for voting for us top 3 for Best vape shop!

36B

the pitch

best of kansas city 2014

D AY

pitch.com

best of kc 2014

goods & services Best Veterinarian

VCA Mission AniMAl RefeRRAl And eMeRgenCy CenteR 5914 Johnson Drive, Mission • 913-722-5566

Pet ailments never come at opportune times. Fido doesn’t start mysteriously and violently puking around quitting time. Smokey digs through the trash at 1 a.m. on Sunday, swallowing a couple of chicken bones, and you’re going to need some help. There are plenty of good vet offices in town, but the hours and availability aren’t that flexible when your pet needs attention on the quick. VCA Mission (formerly Mission Med Vet) is one of the few clinics in the metro that is open 24 hours a day. The bill is never easy to swallow, but staffers there are upfront about what you can expect to pay for emergency care. When your best friend’s life is on the line, this is the place to go.

Best Crystal Ball

KnodA knoda.com

Is Mayor Sly James headed for defeat?

Will the streetcar flourish? Will the Royals win the World Series? If you think you can see the future, exercise your need to be “first” and claim your bragging rights with Knoda, the prognostication app created by Kyle Rogers and James Flexman. Its users share their predictions with the world, with other users quick to agree or disagree with the forecast. The idea came to Rogers about a decade ago, when he saw the collection of talent assembled by then KU basketball coach Roy Williams. When he witnessed Nick Collison, Kirk Hinrich and Drew Gooden, he told his mom that KU was bound for a national championship. He was almost right; KU fell in the 2003 championship game to Syracuse.

Rogers didn’t have a way to prove that he’d made his prediction. He does now.

And so do you. Knoda launched in the iPhone App Store last November. Prediction: success.

Best Bus route

KAnsAs City AReA tRAnspoRtAtion AuthoRity’s no. 47 kcata.org

If you want to get to know Kansas City without a car, hop on KCATA’s No. 47 bus. This wunder-route will take you from 10th Street and Main downtown to the Blue Ridge Crossing shopping center, while hitting Union Station, Penn Valley Community Col-

lege, St. Luke’s Hospital, the Country Club Plaza, Troost, the Paseo, Swope Parkway and other main thoroughfares along the way. With the power of a transfer in your hand, the 47 will, at the very least, take you to a stop and to a bus to get you where you need to go.

Cruising this route, you will observe the city’s cultural topography, from skyscrapers to rough neighborhoods to borderline suburbia. Public-transit rookies, the 47 is your ride.

Best PlaCe to Get a Missouri Car insPeCtion

hAnK’s Auto RepAiR on 39th 1310 West 39th Street • 816-561-6380

Hank’s Auto Repair on 39th is not an auto shop that offers good coffee, doughnuts, cushy chairs or a big TV to mollify customers as they wait for the bad news. The few chairs for customers are in a tiny office with outdated (by years) magazines and yellowing pictures of cars. And they don’t take appointments for inspections. But between 8 and 9 a.m., that’s all they do, and they work fast. If there’s something wrong, the crusty mechanics might grunt at you, “Taillight is out. Want it replaced? Five dollars.” And they probably won’t charge you for labor. The inspection requirement is stupid. These guys get it. And they aim to make your misery brief and mostly painless.

Best MeChaniC

duKe & BoB’s AutoMotiVe 1300 Emanuel Cleaver II Blvd • 816-931-7808 dukeandbobsautorepair.com

We’d like to tell you that we figured out that Duke & Bob’s is our favorite autorepair shop because every time we go, the experience is awesome. But what we like most about this unimposing garage is that since we turned over the keys last time, we haven’t had to see a mechanic again. We got there first thing in the morning, made our usual unhelpful “Uh, so it sounds like this and feels like that? And it’s been doing it for a while and we’re afraid. ” explanation, then waited for the call. The phone rang by 10, the diagnosis wasn’t terrifying, and the cost was fair. By 4, we were on the road again, cruising safer, not having been laughed at for all the things we’ll never know about cars, and not feeling like we couldn’t afford dinner. When your car is as old as our car, that feels like such a miracle that we almost can’t wait to go back to Duke & Bob’s.

•Instruments •Lessons •School Instruments Finally, A Full-Service •Gear Music Store in the •Repair Northland •PA Installations Top Brands Including: Ampeg, Tama, Shure, Ibanez, Ddrum, Dean, Luna, Sennheiser, Behringer, Zildjian, Egnater, Casio & Pro-Mark

6506 NW Prairie View Road Kansas City, MO (816) 505-5005 kcmusicstore.com pitch.com

best of kansas city 2014

D AY

the pitch

37B

Hampton Inn

1400 Village W. Parkway • Kansas City, KS 66111 913-328-1400 • www.kchampton.com

HolIday Inn express 1931 Prairie Crossing • Kansas City, KS 66111 913-328-1024 • www.hiekc.com

It’s as clear as

day and nIGHt Free Continental Breakfast • Free Wireless Internet, 24 Hour Fitness Center • Indoor Heated Pool, Frequent Stay Programs and both are located in the Village West area!

Mention “The PITCH” and receive $20 off your reservation.

not redeemable for cash . cannot be used in conjunction with other coupons , group rates or discounts . subject to availability .

B E St Of kC 2014 PEOPLE & PLACES

Best oVerAll NeighBorhood

1. Brookside 2. Westport 3. Waldo

Best AffordABle NeighBorhood

Best pArk

1. Loose Park 2. Shawnee Mission Park 3. Swope Park

1. Waldo 2. Westport 3. Hyde Park

barrett emke

Best ApArtmeNts

1. The Briarcliff City Apartments 2. Quality Hill Apartments 3. MAC Property Management Best Kansas Politician: Paul Davis

Best AreA AttrActioN

1. The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art 2. The Country Club Plaza 3. National World War I Museum at Liberty Memorial

Best BuildiNg

1. Kauffman Center for the Performing Arts 2. Union Station 3. The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art

Best cAtegory to Add Next yeAr

1. Best Photographer 2. Best Burlesque Performer

Best culturAl NeighBorhood

1. The Crossroads 2. West Side 3. Waldo

Best dAy trip

1. Weston, Missouri 2. Lawrence, Kansas 3. Hermann, Missouri

Best dog pArk

1. Shawnee Mission Park 2. Penn Valley Park 3. Wayside Waifs

Best drAg performer

1. Dirty Dorothy 2. Daisy Buckët 3. Melinda Ryder

Best fouNtAiN

1. JC Nichols Memorial Fountain 2. Meyer Circle Sea Horse Fountain 3. Henry Wollman Bloch Memorial Fountain

Best kANsAs politiciAN

1. Paul Davis 2. Sam Brownback 3. Stephanie Clayton

Best lANdmArk

1. Union Station 2. Liberty Memorial 3. The Scout

Best locAl Blog

1. Meredith, 96.5 the Buzz 2. KC Beer Blog 3. Tony’s Kansas City

Best locAl hero

1. George Brett 2. Lazlo, 96.5 the Buzz 3. Matt Besler

Best locAl rAdio show

1. The Church of Lazlo, 96.5 the Buzz 2. Johnny Dare, 98.9 the Rock 3. Afentra, 96.5 the Buzz

Best locAl tV News persoNAlity

1. Gary Lezak 2. Bryan Busby 3. Mark Alford

Best missouri politiciAN

1. Sly James 2. Claire McCaskill 3. Emanuel Cleaver

Best locAl tV News stAtioN

1. KMBC Channel 9 2. WDAF Channel 4 (Fox 4) 3. KSHB Channel 41

Best Nightlife NeighBorhood

1. Westport 2. Kansas City Power & Light District 3. Waldo pitch.com

Best plAce for A cheAp dAte

1. The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art 2. Grinders 3. Loose Park

Best plAce for A first dAte

1. The Country Club Plaza 2. The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art 3. Extra Virgin

Best plAce to fiNd fAmous people

1. Oklahoma Joe’s 2. The Country Club Plaza 3. Kansas City Power & Light District

Best plAce to meet siNgle meN

1. Westport 2. Missie B’s 3. Kansas City Power & Light District

Best plAce to meet siNgle womeN

1. Westport 2. Kansas City Power & Light District 3. Westport Saloon 4. Accurso’s Italian Restaurant

Best plAce to tAke out-of-towNers

1. Oklahoma Joe’s 2. The Country Club Plaza 3. National World War I Museum at Liberty Memorial

best of kansas city 2014

D AY

the pitch

39B

Best PuBlic Garden

1. Powell Gardens 2. The Ewing and Muriel Kauffman Memorial Garden 3. Laura Conyers Smith Municipal Rose Garden, Loose Park

S ThAnk

We Are Proud to be one of ! kC your picks for Best Bike Shop! fAmilyBiCyCleS-kC.Com |

Erica’s Psychic studio

| 7337 BroAdWAy kCmo | (816) 268-1757

superior to all other Psychics

[816] 965-7125 Specializing in reuniting loverS

Psychic Readings Tarot Readings Palm Readings Crystal Readings

Advice on Love, Divorce, Stress, Depression, Financial Success, Health 100% Guaranteed Results, No False Promises Independence, MO • Grandview, MO

Best radio Personality

1. Lazlo, 96.5 the Buzz 2. Johnny Dare, 98.9 the Rock 3. Afentra, 96.5 the Buzz

Best startuP

1. Front Flip 2. Charlie Hustle 3. Thou Mayest 4. Think Big

Best suBurB

1. Prairie Village 2. Overland Park 3. Lee’s Summit

Best thinG that’s chanGed in Kc in the Past year

1. Sporting KC 2. Westport 3. Streetcar

Best twitter Personality

1. @lazlothebuzz 2. @dannyboi965 3. @KCMOwater

Best View

1. View from the National World War I Museum at Liberty Memorial 2. Kauffman Center for the Performing Arts 3. The Scout Statue

Best weathercaster

1. Gary Lezak 2. Bryan Busby 3. Karli Ritter

SPORTS & RECREATION Best BiKe trail

1. Shawnee Mission Park 2. Indian Creek Trail 3. Trolley Track Trail

Best BowlinG alley

1. Mission Bowl 2. Ward Parkway Lanes 3. Z Strike

Best camPsite

1. Clinton Lake 2. Smithville Lake 3. Watkins Mill 40B

the pitch

best of kansas city 2014

D AY

pitch.com

Best casino

1. Ameristar 2. Harrah’s 3. Argosy

Best chiefs Player

1. Jamaal Charles 2. Alex Smith 3. Dwayne Bowe

Best colleGe athlete

1. Andrew Wiggins, Kansas Jayhawks (basketball) 2. Michael Sam, Missouri Tigers (football) 3. Maty Mauk, Missouri Tigers (football)

Best colleGe BasKetBall coach

1. Bill Self, Kansas 2. Kim Anderson, Missouri 3. Bruce Weber, Kansas State

Best fitness Boot camP

1. Fusion Fitness 2. Project Poolside at theGYMkc 3. EnduraCamps

Best Golf course

1. The National Golf Club of Kansas City 2. Swope Memorial Golf Course 3. Falcon Ridge Golf Course

Best local Gym/fitness cluB

1. 24 Hour Fitness 2. Woodside Health & Tennis Club 3. theGYMkc

Best local KicKBall leaGue

1. KC Blue Balls 2. KC Sport & Social Club 3. BigBalls Kansas City

Best orGanized BiKe ride

1. Bikers for Babies 2. Bike MS 3. Tour de Bier 4. Critical Mass

Best orGanized foot race/run

1. Hospital Hill Run 2. Strutt With Your Mutt 3. Trolley Run

Best Personal trainer

1. Cheryl Birkey 2. Jason Belz 3. Jason Dorssom

bESt Of kC 2014

REaDERS’ ChOICES Best Place to shoot Pool

Best sPortscaster

1. Side Pockets 2. Sharks Restaurant & Billiards 3. Brass Rail

Best Place to throw Darts

1. Side Pockets 2. Chez Charlie 3. Sharks Restaurant & Billiards

Best Place to watch college sPorts

1. Johnny’s Tavern 2. Buffalo Wild Wings 3. 810 Zone

1. Len Dawson 2. Jack Harry 3. Rex Hudler

913.888.0533 velopluskc.com

1. Denny Matthews 2. Danny Parkins 3. Soren Petro

Best sPortswriter

SANTA FE TRAIL DR

LENEXA, KS

BIKES, CoFFEE, YogA

Best sPorts raDio BroaDcaster

1. Jason Whitlock 2. Sam Mellinger 3. Andy McCullough

13440

BIKE SHOP

AND SomETImES

BEER

THANKS FoR VoTINg US oNE oF THE BEST BICYCLE SHoPS!

Our mission at Beyond The Conviction is to provide “at risk job seekers” a range of specialized services designed to educate, provide direction, counseling, and to empower individuals and their families. We accomplish this through the educational and training services that we provide. Evaluations are individualized to fit the clients we serve. We then assign resources based on those needs and availablity. Our team is dedicated to helping our clients exceed their potential and to sustain their ability to be a productive member of society.

Services Provided: Job Search Assistance, Counseling Mentorship, Offender Re-entry Coordination. Resume Development, Transportation Assistance and Life Skills Education. BTC also provides Occupational Spanish Training, Criminal Record Expungement & Pardon Assistance, Basic Computer Skills. Family Re-engagement and Linkages to Educational Resources.

Our Clients: Ex-Offenders, Veterans, Homeless, Credit-Challenged, HIV/AIDs, Under Educated and Recovering Substance Abusers.

1734 East 63rd St., Ste. 504 | Kansas City, MO 64110 | Ph: (816) 842-4975 | www.beyondtheconviction.org Mon- Fri (9am - 6pm) Sat(PRN) | PM-Sessions are available!!! | Orientation: Mondays at 9am, 12pm, 3pm & 6pm Walk-Ins welcome!!! | Bring Valid ID (DL/State ID & SS Card)

Best Sporting KC Player: Graham Zusi

Best Place to watch Kc Pro sPorts

1. Sporting Park 2. Arrowhead Stadium 3. Johnny’s Tavern

Best PuBlic Pool

1. Prairie Village Pool 2. Leawood Aquatic Center 3. Gladstone Community Center 4. Black Bob Bay

Best roller girl

1. Dixie Danger 2. Anne Maul 3. Ruth Canal

Best royals Player

1. Alex Gordon 2. Salvador Perez 3. Eric Hosmer

Best sPorting Kc Player

1. Graham Zusi 2. Matt Besler 3. Dom Dwyer

Best staDium

1. Sporting Park 2. Kauffman Stadium 3. Arrowhead Stadium

Best yoga stuDio

1. Westport Yoga 2. Darling Yoga 3. Maya Yoga

GOODS & SERVICES Best auction house

1. KC Auction House 2. Andrew Turner Auctions 3. Equip-Bid Auctions

Best aDvertising agency

1. VML 2. Barkley 3. Go Local Interactive

pitch.com

best of kansas city 2014

D AY

the pitch

41B

best of kc 2014

readers’ choices

Some o lifesaving prfoogur r ams:

Adoptions • Lo st Pet Reunion s Premier, Afforda ble Veterinary C are Volunteering • Fostering

Best Local Men’s Clothing Store: The Bunker

Best Adult store

1. Cirilla’s 2. 7th Heaven 3. Bang Lingerie and Gifts

Best Antique store

1. River Market Antique Mall 2. Good JuJu 3. Bella Patina

Best Attorney

by P readers!

Best margarita 2011, 2013, 2014 best mexican restaurant 2011, 2012

Voted Best of kansas city wORLD FAMOUS MARGARITAS ON TAP over 280,000 gallons of margaritas sold over 6 million tacos sold

2856 Southwest Blvd | 816.753.0775 | ponaksmexicankitchen.com

The LoreTTo

ApArTmenTs

stylish apartments in historical building on West 39th Studios, 1&2 Bedrooms All Utilities Included • Off Street Parking Laundry Facilities • Huge Windows High Ceilings • No Pets

816-531-3111 by appointment only

1111 W. 39th St. KCMO 42B

the pitch

best of kansas city 2014

D AY

pitch.com

1. Tom Ralston 2. Don Simon

Best Auto deAlership

1. Baron BMW 2. Carmax 3. Rob Sight Ford

Best chiroprActor

1. Kansas City Chiropractic 2. Dr. Michelle Robin 3. Mitchell Chiropractic & Wellness Center, LLC

Best college

1. University of Kansas 2. University of Missouri–Kansas City 3. University of Missouri–Columbia

Best comic Book store

1. Vintage Stock 2. Clint’s Comics 3. Elite Comics

Best consignment store

Best BAnk

1. Plato’s Closet 2. Arizona Trading Company 3. Revival Home Furnishings

Best BArBershop

1. Dr. Ellen Sheridan 2. Dr. Mingos and Associates 3. Dr. Jose Rodriguez

1. Commerce Bank 2. CommunityAmerica Credit Union 3. UMB Bank 1. Chop Tops 2. Sole Patch Barbershop 3. Fifth Street Barbershop

Best Bed And BreAkfAst

1. Southmoreland on the Plaza 2. Oak Street Mansion 3. Inn on Crescent Lake

Best Bicycle shop

1. Volker Bicycles 2. Family Bicycles of Kansas City 3. BikeSource 4. Velo +

Best Body piercing

1. Freaks 2. Irezumi Body Art 3. A-1 Tattoo

Best dentist

Best fArmers mArket

1. City Market Farmers Market 2. City of Overland Park Farmers Market 3. Brookside Farmers Market

Best florist

1. Studio Dan Meiners 2. Fiddly Fig 3. Trapp and Company

Best grocery store

1. Hy-Vee 2. Trader Joe’s 3. Hen House

Best hAir removAl

1. Ideal Image 2. Sara Ivancic, Beauty Brands 3. Summer Ambroz, Beauty Brands

best of kc 2014

readers’ choices Best Hair salon

Best loCal Bookstore

4

201 1. Chop Tops 2. Skyline Salon 3. Bijin Salon and Spa

Best Hairstylist

1. Nick Jenkins, Skyline 2. Jennifer Lusher, Sole Patch 3. Kassey Barnhart, Groom Salon

Best HookaH lounge

1. Jerusalem Café 2. Hookah Haven 3. Sinbad’s Hookah Bar

Best Hospital

1. Children’s Mercy Hospital 2. University of Kansas Medical Center 3. Saint Luke’s Hospital

Best Hotel

1. The Raphael Hotel 2. Hotel Phillips 3. Hotel Sorella

Best indie Crafter

1. Farmers Apothecary 2. Tara Tonsor 3. Lu & Ed

1. The Bunker 2. Baldwin 3. Houndstooth

Best loCal ClotHing designer

Best loCal nursery and garden Center

1. Baldwin 2. Charlie Hustle 3. Monkey Wrench

1. Family Tree Nursery 2. Suburban Lawn and Garden 3. Soil Service Garden Center

Best loCal eyewear store

Best loCal pet grooming

1. Brookside Optical 2. Romanelli Optix 3. Noyce Family Eye Care

1. Brookside Barkery 2. Doggie Style Bowtique 3. Simply Grooming by Gia

Best loCal Home furnisHings store

Best loCal goods

1. Nebraska Furniture Mart 2. Restoration Emporium 3. Nell Hill’s 4. Black Bamboo 5. Crowley Furniture

1. Indigo Wild 2. Charlie Hustle 3. Normal Human

Best loCal sHoe store

1. Bob Jones Shoes 2. The Bunker 3. Garry Gribble’s

Best loCal Jewelry maker

1. Meierotto Jewelers 2. Jennifer Janesko 3. Courtney Perry

Best landsCaper

Best loCal women’s ClotHing Boutique

1. Donna’s Dress Shop 2. Birdies 3. Standard Style

Best loCal Jewelry store

1. The Greensman 2. SSS Lawn and Tree

1. Tivol 2. Meierotto Jewelers 3. Joslin’s Jewelry

Best liquor store

1. Gomer’s 2. Lukas Liquor Superstore 3. Mike’s Wine and Spirits

Best loCal aCCessories designer

Best maniCure/pediCure

1. West Plaza Nails, Salon & Spa 2. Oak Nails 3. Polished Nail Salon & Spa

Best loCally designed app

Best massage

1. Front Flip 2. Boulevardia 3. Knoda

1. Massage Envy Spa 2. Bijin Salon & Spa 3. Imperial Foot Care

Best motorCyCle dealer 1. Gail’s Harley-Davidson 2. Worth Harley-Davidson 3. Rawhide Harley-Davidson

Best new retail store

1. Normal Human 2. Raygun 3. Top Hat Mercantile

Best nonprofit

1. Wayside Waifs 2. KC Pet Project 3. Great Plains SPCA

s a b r i n a s ta i r e s

1. Jennifer Janesko 2. Scarlett Garnet Jewelry 3. Courtney Perry

Best loCal men’s ClotHing store

1. Rainy Day Books 2. Half Price Books 3. Prospero’s Books

Best pet Boarding/ pet dayCare

1. Pete and Mac’s 2. Pooches Paradise 3. Woof’s Play & Stay

Best plaCe to Buy a musiCal instrument

1. Big Dude’s Music City 2. Meyer Music 3. Guitar Center

Best pet retail

1. Brookside Barkery 2. PetSmart 3. Whiskers and Wags — Wayside Waifs

Best plaCe to adopt a pet

1. Wayside Waifs 2. KC Pet Project 3. Great Plains SPCA

Best plaCe to Buy a sCooter

1. Craigslist 2. Scooter World 3. Donnell’s Motorcycles

Best plaCe to Buy an engagement ring

1. Tivol 2. Meierotto Jewelers 3. Shane Co.

Best plaCe to sHop green

1. City Market 2. Trader Joe’s 3. Whole Foods

Best plaCe you wisH were still in Business

1. Beaumont Club 2. Streetside Records 3. The Boot

Best plastiC surgeon

1. Dr. John Quinn 2. Dr. Jeffrey Dillow 3. Dr. Richard Korentager

Best plumBer

1. Bob Hamilton Plumbing 2. A.B. May 3. Anthony Plumbing, Heating & Cooling

Best real-estate agent

1. George Medina 2. Susan Clifford 3. Gary Smith

Best reCord store

1. Vinyl Renaissance & Audio 2. Mills Record Co. 3. Zebedee’s

Best smoke sHop

1. Fidel’s Cigar Shop 2. Cooper’s Broadway Tobacco 3. Aqueous Vapor

Best New Retail Store: Normal Human pitch.com

best of kansas city 2014

D AY

the pitch

43B

DUDE!

bEST of kc 2014

REAdERS’ choIcES Best spa

1. The Spa at Briarcliff 2. Bijin Salon & Spa 3. Par Exsalonce

Best tattoo artist

1. Whispering Danny 2. Jessie Hopeless 3. Jimmy Kuder III

Best tattoo shop

1. The Mercy Seat Tattoo and Art Gallery 2. Exile Tattoo 3. Irezumi Body Art

Best Vape shop

1. KC Vapes 2. Aqueous Vapor 3. Vapur

Best Veterinarian

1. Wayside Waifs 2. Fairway Animal Hospital 3. Noah’s Ark Animal Clinic 4. Cavanaugh Pet Hospital

Best Vintage Clothing store

1. Donna’s Dress Shop 2. Boomerang 3. Wonderland

Thank you ! m o c . s a e d h c t i myp Half on some e r o m s n a e m f stuf r e h t o r o f y e n mo stuff!

Best Wedding Venue

1. The Guild KC 2. Berg Event Space 3. The Promise Event Space

ARTS & ENTERTAINMENT Best art FestiVal

1. First Fridays 2. Plaza Art Fair 3. Brookside Art Fair

Best Blues Venue

1. Knuckleheads Saloon 2. B.B.’s Lawnside BBQ 3. The Blue Room

Best Comedy CluB

1. Stanford and Sons 2. Kansas City Improv 3. Comedy City 4. Kansas City Improv at Zona Rosa

.com 44B

the pitch

best of kansas city 2014

D AY

pitch.com

Best ConCert

1. Justin Timberlake 2. Buzz Beach Ball 3. Paul McCartney

Best Fashion eVent 4

1 1. West 18th Street20Fashion Show 2. Kansas City Fashion Week 3. Fashion for a Cause

Best FireWorks display

1. Riverfest 2. Celebration at the Station 3. Corporate Woods

Best improV/ sketCh troupe

1. Kansas City Improv Company 2. Comedy City 3. Pencil Pushers

Best Jazz Venue

1. The Phoenix 2. Green Lady Lounge 3. The Blue Room

Best JukeBox

1. Harry’s Country Club 2. Chez Charlie 3. Gilhouly’s

Best karaoke

1. Hamburger Mary’s 2. Red Balloon 3. Offkey Karaoke Lounge & Suites

Best liVe theater

1. Starlight Theatre 2. Kansas City Repertory Theatre 3. The Living Room

Best loCal aCtor (liVing in kC)

1. Ron Megee 2. Damian Blake 3. Rusty Sneary

Best loCal aCtress

1. Katie Gilchrist 2. Vanessa Severo 3. Ashley Otis

Best loCal alBum

1. Pedaljets, What’s in Between 2. Shy Boys, Shy Boys 3. A.J. Gaither, Homemade

Best loCal Band

1. Beautiful Bodies 2. Trampled Under Foot 3. Making Movies

Best loCal FestiVal

1. Boulevardia 2. Renaissance Festival 3. Irish Fest

Best loCal Film FestiVal

1. Middle of the Map 2. Kansas City Film Festival 3. Out Here Now — Kansas City LGBT Film Festival

best OF kc 2014

reaDers’ chOices Best puBLic art

1. Nelson-Atkins Sculpture Garden 2. Crossroads Art District 3. Scribe

Best poet/ spoken word artist

barrett emke

1. Sara “Miss Conception” Glass 2. Jen Harris 3. Ezhno the Abomination Martin

Best radio station

1. 96.5 The Buzz 2. KCUR 89.3 3. The Bridge 90.9

Best trivia night

1. Westport Flea Market 2. Geeks Who Drink 3. Flying Saucer Best New Music Venue: The Tank Room

Best LocaLLy Made Movie

1. Jayhawkers 2. Call Girl 3. Withered World

Best LocaL 7-inch singLe

1. Radkey 2. Shy Boys 3. Red Kate/Bad ideas

Best LocaL theater coMpany

1. Kansas City Repertory Theatre 2. Late Night Theatre 3. Mystery Train

Best LocaL visuaL artist

1. Scribe 2. Rob Schamberger 3. Jeremy Collins

Best Movie theater

1. Alamo Drafthouse 2. AMC Ward Parkway 3. Screenland Armour

Best Music FestivaL

1. Middle of the Map 2. Buzz Beach Ball 3. Rockfest

Best MuseuM

1. Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art 2. National World War I Museum 3. Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art

Best art space

1. Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art 2. Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art 3. Leedy-Voulkos

Best new Music venue

1. The Tank Room 2. Westport Saloon 3. Vandals

Best open Mic

1. Uptown Arts Bar 2. Westport Saloon, Brody Buster 3. The Tank Room, Songwriter’s Scene

Best outdoor Music venue

1. CrossroadsKC at Grinders 2. Starlight Theatre 3. Knuckleheads Saloon

Best BeneFit party

1. Jazzoo 2. Wayside Waifs’ Fur Ball 3. Bloom

Best perForMing arts group

1. Quixotic Fusion 2. Mystery Train 3. Owen-Cox Dance Group

Best pLace to dance

1. Riot Room 2. The Union 3. Owen-Cox Dance Group

Best pLace to hear Live Music

1. Crossroads KC at Grinders 2. RecordBar 3. Knuckleheads Saloon

Best pLay

1. The Winter’s Tale, Shakespeare in the Park 2. Dykes of Hazzard, Late Night Theatre 3. A Little Night Music, Spinning Tree Theatre

FOOD Best Bakery

1. Dolce Bakery 2. Sasha’s Baking Co. 3. Piece of Cake

Best Bar Food

1. The Peanut 2. Beer Kitchen 3. The Foundry

missoURi’s smallesT BReWeRy

Best BarBecue

1. Oklahoma Joe’s 2. Fiorella’s Jack Stack Barbecue 3. Gates Bar-B-Q

Best BarBecue event

1. American Royal BBQ 2. Great Lenexa BBQ Battle 3. Tour de BBQ

Best BreakFast

1. First Watch 2. Succotash 3. Eggtc.

Best Brunch

1. Beer Kitchen 2. The Bristol 3. Succotash

Voted one of KC’s Best LunCh speCiaLs come see foR yoURself!

Best Burger

1. Westport Flea Market 2. BRGR 3. Blanc Burgers + Bottles

Best Burrito

1. Chipotle 2. Pancho’s 3. Freebirds

4010 Pennsylvania kcmo

816.216.7682

GreenroomKC.Com GreenroomKC pitch.com

best of kansas city 2014

D AY

the pitch

45B

best of kc 2014

readers’ choices Best Butcher shop

COM E MIN G LE WI T H A D E LICIOUS DI SH.

1. Local Pig 2. McGonigle’s Market 3. Broadway Butcher Shop

Best cajun Food

1. Jazz, A Louisiana Kitchen 2. Nica’s Lagniappe 3. Danny’s Big Easy 4. Cajun Cabin

Best caterer

1. Accurso’s Italian Restaurant 2. Delish!

3. Lon Lane’s Inspired Occasions

Best cheap eats

1. Town Topic 2. Rico’s Tacos Lupe 3. Detroit Coney Mobile Food Truck

Best cheF

1. Michael Smith, Michael Smith Restaurant 2. Howard Hanna, the Rieger Hotel Grill & Exchange 3. Celina Tio, Julian

Best chili

1. Dixon’s Famous Chili 2. Fritz’s Chili 3. Woodyard BBQ

Best chinese restaurant

THE SURE THING

1. Blue Koi 2. Bo Lings 3. ABC Café

$42

Best chocolate shop

1. Christopher Elbow Artisanal Chocolate 2. Andre’s Confiserie Suisse 3. Chip’s Chocolate Factory

OUR SEASONAL PRIX FIXE MENU Come enjoy our desirable $42 prix fixe menu:

Best culinary event

1. Kansas City Restaurant Week 2. Taste of Kansas City 3. Forks & Corks

your choice of an appetizer, soup or salad, and entrée from a variety of seasonal favorites.

Best cupcakes

After all, everyone loves a sure thing.

1. Smallcakes A Cupcakery 2. Cupcake À La Mode 3. Piece of Cake

Best delicatessen

1. d’Bronx 2. Carollo’s Italian Deli 3. Milwaukee Delicatessen

913.345.0800 | 4501 West 119th St. | Leawood, KS SullivansSteakhouse.com Restrictions apply. ©2014 Sullivan’s Steakhouse

46B

the pitch

best of kansas city 2014

-Leawood BestOfKC-SureThing-HP.indd 1

D AY

Best dessert

1. Cheesecake Factory 2. Accurso’s Italian Restaurant 3. Piece of Cake Bakery

pitch.com 9/24/14 10:49 AM

Best doughnuts

1. LaMar’s Donuts 2. Fluffy Fresh Donuts 3. Donut King

Best Food Blog

1. Eat it Kansas City 2. Recommended Daily 3. Ulterior Epicure 4. Eating Awesomeness

Best Food truck

1. Pigwich 2. Jerusalem Café 3. Detroit Coney Mobile Food Truck

Best French Fries

1. Oklahoma Joe’s 2. Five Guys Burgers and Fries 3. Detroit Coney Mobile Food Truck

Best French restaurant

1. Le Fou Frog 2. Aixois 3. Café Provence

Best Fried chicken

1. Stroud’s 2. Rye KC 3. RC’s Restaurant

Best gluten-Free Menu

1. Spin Neapolitan Pizza 2. Café Gratitude 3. FooDoo

Best hangover BreakFast

1. Chubby’s on Broadway 2. Town Topic 3. Succotash

Best hot dog/ Bratwurst

1. New York Dawg Pound 2. Haus 3. Detroit Coney Mobile Food Truck

Best hotel restaurant

1. Chaz on the Plaza, The Raphael Hotel 2. Providence New American Kitchen, Hilton President Hotel 3. Rosso, Hotel Sorella

Best Fine dining

1. Bluestem 2. The Capital Grille 3. The American Restaurant

Best ice creaM

1. Murray’s Ice Creams & Cookies 2. Glacé Artisan Ice Cream 3. Sheridan’s Lattes & Frozen Custard

best of kc 2014

readers’ choices Best IndIan RestauRant 4

201 1. Korma Sutra 2. Taj Mahal 3. Swagat Fine Indian Cuisine

Best ItalIan RestauRant

1. Garozzo’s 2. Lidia’s 3. Jasper’s

Best Japanese RestauRant

1. Nara 2. Gojo Japanese Steak House 3. Drunken Fish

Best KoRean RestauRant

1. Kokoro Maki House 2. Korean Restaurant Sobahn 3. Choga

Best late-nIght eats

1. Town Topic 2. Chubby’s on Broadway 3. Eat Me Gourmet

Best latIn-ameRIcan RestauRant

1. La Bodega 2. El Porton Cafe 3. Poco’s 4. Latin Bistro

Best lawRence RestauRant

1. Free State Brewing Co. 2. The Burger Stand at the Casbah 3. 715

Best local BaKeR

1. Farm to Market Bread Co. 2. Piece of Cake Bakery 3. Taylor Holmes

Best local BRead

1. Farm to Market Bread Co. 2. Fervere Bakery 3. Sasha’s Baking Co. 4. Ibis Bakery

Best mexIcan RestauRant

1. Port Fonda 2. El Patrón 3. Manny’s Mexican Restaurant

Best new RestauRant

1. Q39 2. Novel 3. Preservation Market 4. FooDoo 5. Sasha’s Baking Co.

Best place foR a RomantIc dInneR

Best place to eat at the BaR

Best RestauRant

1. The Capital Grille 2. Accurso’s Italian Restaurant 3. Detroit Coney Mobile Food Truck

1. Bluestem 2. Le Fou Frog 3. Café Provence

1. The Peanut 2. McCoy’s 3. Bluestem

Best outdooR dInIng

1. McCoy’s Public House 2. Gram & Dun 3. Rye

Best pho

1. Vietnam Café (39th) 2. Vietnam Café (Campbell) 3. Pho Good 4. iPho Tower

Best pIzza

1. Waldo Pizza 2. Minsky’s 3. Spin Neapolitan Pizza

1. The Rieger Hotel Grill & Exchange 2. Bluestem 3. Novel

1. Fiorella’s Jack Stack Barbecue 2. The Capital Grille 3. Tavern in the Village 4. Accurso’s Italian Restaurant

Best place that’s woRth the waIt

1. Oklahoma Joe’s 2. Stroud’s 3. Rye

Best RestauRant/ BaR foR a fIRst date

1. Extra Virgin 2. Bluestem 3. Accurso’s Italian Restaurant

Best seRvIceIndustRy hangout

1. Harry’s Bar & Tables 2. Fred P. Ott’s Bar & Grill 3. Accurso’s Italian Restaurant

Best RestauRant wIth a vIew

1. The Capital Grille 2. J. Gilbert’s Wood-Fired Steaks and Seafood 3. Hereford House

1. Waldo Pizza 2. Minsky’s 3. Jimmy John’s

Best RIBs

1. Oklahoma Joe’s 2. Fiorella’s Jack Stack Barbecue 3. Gates Bar-B-Q

Best sandwIch

1. Z-Man, Oklahoma Joe’s 2. Pigwich 3. Burnt Ends Sandwich, Gates Bar-B-Q 4. Planet Sub

Best seafood

1. Bristol Seafood Grille 2. McCormick & Schmick’s Seafood Restaurant 3. Bonefish Grill

Best steaKhouse

Best sushI

1. Nara 2. Drunken Fish 3. RA Sushi Bar

Best taco

1. Taco Republic 2. Port Fonda 3. El Camino Real

Best taKeout

1. Oklahoma Joe’s 2. Lulu’s Thai Noodle Shop 3. Bo Lings

Best thaI RestauRant

1. Lulu’s Thai Noodle Shop 2. Thai Place 3. Tasty Thai

Best vegetaRIan dIsh

1. Café Gratitude 2. Nachos, Füd 3. Veggie Dog, Detroit Coney Mobile Food Truck

Best local chaIn

Best vegetaRIan menu

1. Spin Neapolitan Pizza 2. Gates Bar-B-Q 3. Winstead’s

1. Café Gratitude 2. Eden Alley Café 3. Füd

Best lunch specIal

Best vIetnamese RestauRant

1. Green Room Burgers & Beer 2. Accurso’s Italian Restaurant 3. Sakae Sushi

1. Vietnam Café (Campbell) 2. Vietnam Café (39th) 3. Saigon 39 4. iPho Tower

Best medIteRRanean RestauRant

1. Jerusalem Café 2. Aladdin Café 3. Holy Land Café

Best seRvIce

Best RestauRant that delIveRs

1. The American 2. Piropos 3. Café Trio

Best place foR a BusIness lunch

Best seRveR

1. Emily Owens, The Well 2. Scott Livingston, Accurso’s 3. David Hayden, The Majestic 4. Becky Jones, The Melting Pot 5. Becky Riley, Brobeck’s Barbeque 6. Jackie Robertson, Kozak’s Laketown Grill

Best Place for a Romantic Dinner: Bluestem pitch.com

best of kansas city 2014

D AY

the pitch

47B

Pitch MetropolitanKC Alt 4.125 x 4.9375.qxp_Layout 1 9/19/14 5:29 PM Page 1

WHO SAYS A HOTEL RESTAURANT CAN’T BE GREAT?

Best Wings

1. The Peanut 2. Buffalo Wild Wings 3. Johnny’s Tavern

4 201

DRINK Best Bar for PeoPle Watching

1. Buzzard Beach 2. McCoy’s Public House 3. Harry’s Bar and Tables

Best Bar to Meet PeoPle

This one is!

Enjoy fresh, local and delectable choices in a contemporary setting.

1. Harry’s Bar and Tables 2. Bier Station 3. Buzzard Beach

STEAKS l CHOPS l SEAFOOD l BBQ

Best Beer craWl

1. Waldo Crawldo 2. Crawl for Cancer 3. Falldo Waldo Crawldo

MetropolitanKC R E S T A U R A N T

Best Bartender

200 West 12thStreet Kansas City, Missouri 64105 816.421.6800 metropolitankcmarriott.com

1. Jenn Tosatto, the Rieger 2. KC Thompson, Accurso’s Italian Restaurant 3. Ed Murray, Next Door Pizza 4. KO, Snow & Co.

Best Beer festival

1. Boulevardia 2. Parkville Microbrew Fest 3. Hop Fest

Best Beer selection (Bottles)

1. Bier Station 2. Flying Saucer 3. Bridger’s Bottle Shop

Best BreWPuB

1. McCoy’s Public House 2. 75th Street Brewery 3. Martin City Brewery

pitch.com

Best dive Bar

1. The Peanut 2. Buzzard Beach 3. (Tie) Chez Charlie, Dave’s Stagecoach Inn

Best gay Bar

1. Missie B’s 2. Hamburger Mary’s 3. Bistro 303

Best haPPy hour

1. La Bodega 2. Houlihan’s 3. Bluestem

Best hotel Bar

1. Drum Room 2. 12 Baltimore 3. Bar Rosso

Best iced coffee

Best Bloody Mary

Best Boulevard release

D AY

Best college Bar

1. Harpo’s 2. The Wheel 3. Mike’s Tavern

1. Kelly’s Westport Inn 2. O’Dowd’s Little Dublin 3. O’Malley’s 4. Llywelyn’s Pub

1. Tank 7 2. Ginger Lemon Radler 3. Saison-Brett

best of kansas city 2014

Best coffeehouse

1. Roasterie Café 2. Quay Coffee 3. Black Dog Coffeehouse

Best Beer selection (taPs)

1. Beer Kitchen 2. RecordBar 3. Port Fonda

the pitch

Best coffee

1. The Roasterie 2. Oddly Correct 3. Broadway Cafe and Roasting Co.

1. Mud Pie Vegan Bakery 2. Black Dog Coffeehouse 3. Starbucks

1. Flying Saucer 2. Bier Station 3. Yard House

48B

Best cocktail Menu

1. Manifesto 2. Julep 3. District Pour House

Best irish PuB

Best local Beer

1. Boulevard, Tank 7 2. Boulevard, Unfiltered Wheat 3. Boulevard, Pale Ale

Best local distillery

1. Dark Horse Distillery 2. McCormick’s 3. S.D. Strong Distilling Co.

Best local Winery

1. Amigoni 2. Somerset Ridge 3. Pirtle

best of kc 2014

readers’ choices Best LocaLLy owned Brewery

1. KC Bier Co. 2. Martin City Brewing Co. 3. Cinder Block Brewery

Best Margarita

1. El Patrón 2. Ponak’s 3. Port Fonda

Best Martini

1. The Drop 2. The Capital Grille 3. Thomas

Best MiLkshake

1. Winstead’s 2. Blanc Burgers + Bottles 3. Town Topic 4. Steak & Shake

Best MixoLogist

Best PLace for girLs night out

1. Nara 2. Accurso’s Italian Restaurant 3. Kanza Hall

Best PLace for guys night out

1. Westport Saloon 2. Bazooka’s Showgirls 3. Accurso’s Italian Restaurant

Best rooftoP

1. The Well 2. John’s Big Deck 3. Kelly’s Westport Inn 4. BrewTop

Best sexy Bar staff

1. Twin Peaks 2. Julep 3. Westport Saloon

barrett emke

1. Beau Williams, Julep 2. Jonathan Bush, Manifesto 3. Jenn Tosatto, the Rieger

craft cocktaiLs

1. Manifesto 2. Julep 3. The District Pour House + Kitchen

Best New Bar or Club: Julep

Best neighBorhood Bar

1. Charlie Hooper’s 2. Bier Station 3. Lew’s Grill and Bar

Best new Bar or cLuB

1. Julep 2. Westport Ale House 3. Westport Saloon

Best new Brewery

1. KC Bier Co. 2. Cinder Block Brewery 3. Rock & Run Brewery

Best Patio

1. McCoy’s Public House 2. Gram & Dun 3. The Well

Best PLace for

Best sPorts Bar

Thank you KC for all your support!

1. Johnny’s Tavern 2. Tanner’s 3. 810 Zone

Best 3 a.M. Bar

1. Harry’s Bar and Tables 2. Buzzard Beach 3. Westport Saloon

Best wine Bar

1. Tannin Wine Bar 2. Louie’s Wine Dive 3. Cooper’s Hawk

Best wine List in a restaurant

1. Tannin Wine Bar 2. Louie’s Wine Dive 3. Accurso’s Italian Restaurant

winery.amigoni.com | info@amigoni.com hours: tuesday through saturday 11am - 6:00 pm fridays 11:00 am - 7:00 pm | sunday 12 - 5:00 pm

1505 genessee kansas city, mo 64102 pitch.com

best of kansas city 2014

D AY

the pitch

49B

50B

the pitch

best of kansas city 2014

D AY

pitch.com