A Kansas City restaurant has been named one of the ten best new restaurants in the nation by Esquire magazine.
Fox & Pearl isn’t new, exactly, having opened in the middle of last year and been named our Restaurant of the Year for 2019.
But it’s still a notable national nod for Chef Vaughn Good’s meaty ode to Midwestern cooking.
The rest of the list, likewise, has some restaurants that aren’t quite new new—such as St. Louis’ excellent Balkan Treat Box—but are new enough given the oddity of this year. The editors acknowledge the limitations of conducting such a survey during the pandemic, apologizing in the introduction for, among other things, not visiting Texas as part of their research road trip.
Still, Fox & Pearl left a big impression.
“Meat and potatoes. The words are often used as a pejorative to describe the food of the Midwest. But with the finesse and creativity that chef Vaughn Good employs, give me meat and potatoes all day. The menu at Fox and Pearl changes frequently,” writes Esquire.
See the full list here.
Oh, and this seems like a good time to mention to anyone looking for our annual Best Restaurants issue next week. Regrettably, with the ongoing pandemic, we decided to hold off on updating our standard-bearing list of KC’s forty best restaurants—in order to compile that list we visit hundreds of spots, which isn’t safe or practical right now. However, we do have a food-themed issue we think you’ll love on the way.
