Fall restaurant and bar openings in Kansas City include a project from The Russell that brings French comfort food to Midtown and a new taqueria in Overland Park.
Deux It
The team behind The Russell has a new project selling French comfort food in Midtown. Tailleur, now open at 3933 Main St. in KCMO, comes from Heather White and AmanteDomingo of The Russell. The menu has some similarities but leans further toward an all-day French bistro, a laAixois in Brookside. Look for quiche in the morning, then mussels, salmon nicoise, duck confit and a French dip later in the day. There’s also a burger, which tracks—the French love burgers for more than most Europeans do. View this post on Instagram
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New Nueva
What’s the name of that new taqueria at 12561 Antioch Road in Overland Park? Ah yes: Taqueria La Nueva. The new taqueria brings lengua and tripa to a part of town where it was scarce before and also makes trendy quesabirria. So far we’ve seen long lines of enthusiastic South JoCo crowds looking for taqueria-style Mexican in the neighborhood.
Haunted Independence
A century ago, J. Ott & Co Undertaking was the only town morgue in Independence. This Halloween, it’s a pop-up bar. Kansas City’s Halloween pop-up bar, Apparition Spookeasy, has partnered with 3 Trails Brewing to open a new location in the historic Independence Square. Guests are handed a lantern as they begin their descent into the underground bar, owner Edward Schmalz says.
Cocktails include the Xenomorph, made with UnionHorse’s Rye Whiskey and Szechuan peppers meant to“realign the senses” so the cocktail is tasted in reverse. TheNosferatu is a pitch-black cocktail with activated charcoal and mezcal. The Monster Squad is a shareable apple brandy drink served in a black cauldron with dry ice. There’s also the Upside Down Old Fashioned, which uses waffle-infused rum and maple syrup.
Schmalz says he’s always loved Halloween. “I thought it would be fun to create a Halloween party that would last for over a month,” he says.
The new pop-up will remain open through the end of October. Customers can sip drinks in the eerie space Thursday through Saturday from 6 pm to 1 am and on Halloween, which falls on a Sunday this year.
Silver on the Ceiling
If you haven’t been to BKS Artisan Ales on 63rd Street in a while, you’ll notice they’ve moved some things around. The brewery, which stayed with to-go cans only until vaccines were widely available, has moved their taproom around to make more space inside.
Also new: a silver medal for Clouds, their hazy double IPA, from the annual Great American Beer Festival awards. This was the first time BKS entered the competition, the nation’s largest, which is usually timed to a massive beer festival in Denver. (Kansastook two medals this year, both for breweries outside the KC area, while Missouri had four, the other three also outside KC.)
Clouds was the first double IPA that BKS brewed when it opened back in2017. It’s a beer that brewer-owner Brian Rooney had been working on since 2015, when he started making trial batches as he eyed leaving his family’s longtime profession, accounting, to open his own brewery.
