I Am The Leggman

I Am The Leggman

QUINDARO’S TURKEYLEGGMAN HAS WACKY PRESENTATION AND DEADLY SERIOUS GOOD BIRD

By Liz Cook

I’ve spent the last seven years reviewing Kansas City restaurants—which means I’ve spent the last seven years living like a fugitive, rarely returning to the scene of the crime. As of this issue, though, I’ve officially retired as a restaurant critic for The Pitch. I have time to develop fixations, again. And for the past several weeks, I have craved only one thing: the Turkeyleggman.

Maybe it’s the restaurant’s name—KC Turkeyleggman that confluence of consonants in a crowded compound subject. Maybe it’s that you can order something there called the “Buss Down Legg”—a smoked turkey leg the size of a caveman’s club, slashed and stuffed with glossy mac and cheese. Maybe it’s the way that legg seems to leer at you from its styrofoam tray—a little glamorous, a little grotesque.

But it’s not all that complicated. KC Turkeyleggman is fun. It’s funny. And the barbecuing(g) is serious.

That’s all thanks to Matthew Montgomery, the titular leggman, who has spent the last six years perfecting his smoked turkey legs. He started by hocking a case of legs every weekend in the parking lot of Suite 39, a salon at 39th and Paseo. All he had back then was a cheap backyard grill—“maybe $25,” he says. The next summer, he upgraded to a barrel grill. In March 2020—just a couple weeks before the city’s first wave of COVID-19 closures—he bought an offset smoker and trailer off of Facebook Marketplace and launched Turkeyleggman as an official food truck.

This May, the Leggman found a permanent home: 1916 Quindaro, the KCK address previously claimed by Mexican restaurant Gallardo’s. The vibe is casual: the walls are black, the ordering counter is trimmed with corrugated aluminum sheeting, and the main aesthetic gesture is a cartoon mural of a grinning face—Montgomery’s face—in sunglasses. There’s a single table and a couple of stools, but on all of my visits, I was the only weirdo who used them. Most of the customers trickling in and out are taking their turkey to go.

People don’t come here for the ambiance. They come here for the leggs. I’ve eaten my share of bland, stringy turkey legs at Renaissance Faires and roadside barbecue stands. Turkeyleggman’s version is altogether different. The standard leg ($15) is crisp-skinned but never charred, moist but never greasy. Montgomery tells me he uses a dry and wet rub and that he smokes with wood—hickory, mostly, but also cherry and pecan.

The classic legg is large enough to feed two, and it’s the plate I order most. But for sheer linguistic (and caloric) excess, it’s worth trying the Buss Down Legg ($25) at least once. As you might expect, the slangy name has a story. “‘Bussin’ is like real good or real fly,” Montgomery says. “There’s a place in Houston called the Turkey Leg Hut, and they sell a different version of it down there, and people kept asking me about it. It didn’t look appealing to me, but customers were constantly asking, saying ‘I be bussin’ down for that.’’’

The Turkey Leg Hut’s stuffed leg is called just that—a “stuffed leg”—and the standard filling is dirty rice, not mac and cheese. Montgomery’s right: It doesn’t look appealing. A “Buss Down Legg” blanketed with creamy mac and cheese, on the other hand, looks like a Rococo masterpiece.

It helps that the mac and cheese is good: neither especially saucy nor dry, with just an even, creamy, elastic coating of cheese on each noodle. Montgomery uses four kinds of cheese—Parmesan, Havarti, white American, and white cheddar—“and a couple little secret seasonings.” Does the mac-stuffed leg offer any advantages over ordering a legg with a side of mac-and-cheese ($7)? Not really.

Is the Buss Down Legg Instagram bait? Unequivocally. But it’s also just fun.

Even with the restaurant’s obvious poultry framing, the other menu items feel just as thoughtful. Montgomery typically offers smoked chicken wings (five pieces for $12; eight pieces for $15, served with crinkle-cut fries) and burnt ends ($15, also served with fries, and better than the burnt ends at some of the city’s decades-old barbecue institutions). But the single dish most worth ordering here (besides the legg) might be the greens ($7), which are a tender mix of collards, kale, and red and green cabbage. Montgomery’s greens are tender, smoky, comforting, rich—and studded with smoky morsels of turkey, of course. There’s nothing quite like them in the city.

Turkey’s always going to be the focus here. But Montgomery has the barbecue chops to expand the restaurant’s offerings. He hopes to add mutton barbecue to the mix soon—an homage to his grandfather, who he says was well-known for his mutton barbecue in New Bloomfield, Missouri. (If he does, he’d be paying accidental homage to a Kansas City icon, too. Although mutton barbecue is typically associated with Kentucky, KC has its own sheepish tradition dating back to Henry Perry).

And while the menu is compact, KC Turkeyleggman showcases a couple of other fun, local brands. The restaurant serves regular and strawberry lemonade from Douglas Lemonade—a budding company helmed by Montgomery’s childhood friend, William Douglas—and desserts from Handmade with Love.

The only snag? Right now, the Turkeyleggman isn’t always easy to catch. KC Turkeyleggman’s hours are ostensibly 1 p.m. to 8 p.m. Wednesday through Sunday, but life sometimes intervenes. When I showed up at 1 p.m. on a recent Saturday, the restaurant was dark, and the billowing black “TURKEY LEGS” banner I’d seen out front on previous visits was gone. My distress must have been noticeable because a woman shortly puttered into the parking lot on a riding lawnmower. She was towing a wheeled cart where three children sat quietly under a sun umbrella.

“You here for the Turkeyleggman?” she asked. I nodded. “When he’s here, you’ll see a big black truck.”

Those physical markers—the truck, the banner—are a reminder: KC Turkeyleggman is a neighborhood joint. For the rest of us, there’s social media. Montgomery is active on Instagram—@kc_turkeyleggman—and tends to post legg on main when the kitchen is open.

It all gives the Turkeyleggman the air of an inscrutable legend, where the process of securing the legg falls somewhere between “limited edition sneaker drop” and “riddle of the sphinx.” In my household, the quest spawned a series of aphorisms. If the truck is gone / no turkey’s on. When the legg’s online / it’s time to dine.

Those hours are likely to firm up soon. Although the restaurant has technically been open since May, Montgomery says he’s still planning a Grand Opening, with no date set as of this writing. That, too, has a slightly mysterious feel.

“We’ll know when the time is right,” Montgomery tells me. Whenever it is, I’ll buss down.