If you needed proof that Kansas City’s food scene keeps leveling up, this year’s best new restaurants deliver it. The lineup ranges from two remarkable Lebanese arrivals to fresh visions of Japanese dining, plus a Japanese-leaning sourdough bakery that already has a cult following. Even the city’s new star-backed steakhouse, despite a few growing pains, is delivering a national-level experience with a local flair. Strict dress code be damned, you can wear your Chiefs jersey on game days while indulging on a Wagyu beef steak. Together, they tell the story of a city eating bigger, bolder and better than ever.
HOW WE MADE THIS LIST
For this list of Kansas City’s best new restaurants, we paid our own way and did not announce ourselves. Advertisers were not favored.
Restaurants of every type were considered. We picked restaurants that offer an exceptional dining experience and enrich the city’s cultural landscape.
No. 1 ANJIN
1708 Oak St., KCMO. anjinkc.com.
Anjin is open Thursday–Sunday from 5:30–1 am and Monday from 5:30 pm–midnight.
Anjin is the Momofuku of Kansas City.
In the early aughts, a tiny NYC ramen shop called Momofuku rewired the dining world when chef and owner David Chang threw out the white-tablecloth expectations and served the food he and his cooks ate when the doors closed: unpretentious, deep and boldly flavored noodle bowls that, at that time, hit harder than anything “elevated” on the scene. The industry shifted and chefs began cooking for themselves, not for a mythical target diner.
Anjin, the 20-seat restaurant owned and operated by Nick and Leslie Goellner, of the Antler Room, and Drew Little, was bred of similar intention. The Crossroads izakaya, modeled after the casual sake and eating pubs in Japan, doesn’t cater to everyone. And perhaps because of that, it’s why we’re dubbing it Kansas City’s Best New Restaurant.
As you sit at Anjin’s U-shaped bar, you can see everything but the components of the walk-in refrigerator. The line of chefs toward the back work nearly elbow-to-elbow, focused with a calm sense of urgency. One young cook fans the makeshift yakitori grill while seasoned sous chef Sam Edelson teaches another the process of frying thick slices of pork collar to perfection. Meanwhile, the front of the house staff dance around them while asking if you’d prefer a lighter, more aromatic sake or if maybe you’d be open to it with a gentle punch of umami. There are no walls between those cooking, those taking orders and you, the diner and voyeur. They dance while you feast on fatty bits of chicken tails and cabbage salads scattered with fried tazukuri anchovies—and maybe goat stew, if you’re lucky enough to catch the special.
There’s a bit more juicy comfort to Anjin’s menu than previously found at the highly refined Antler Room. Chef Nick’s dedication to delightful and impressive textures is still seen—in, for instance, the beet salad with seaweed spiced walnuts, persimmons, watermelon radish and toasted rice. Overall, there’s a wonderful sort of delicious depth to each Anjin dish. Nick’s approach is intentional. He’ll happily tell you how the tonkatsu sandwich traces back to Japan’s Meiji Restoration in the late 19th century, and possibly to Prussian military influence. It’s the kind of cross-cultural mash-up, he says, that makes perfect sense for an izakaya rooted in the Midwest. He’s just as animated when describing the kakiage, a tempura-fried tumble of vegetables and black tiger prawns inspired by Japan’s knack for making fried food that somehow never feels heavy. Dipped in the bright, light tentsuyu sauce with cherry blossoms, herb oil and a house dashi, the whole dish sings to high heavens.
In Japan, izakayas are small, so it’s fitting that the Crossroads restaurant is tight, even beyond the kitchen and bar. There’s no room for a host stand; instead, Leslie stands right by the door to greet you immediately when you walk in. As you throw back bubbly Japanese beers and skewered chicken hearts, you find yourself not distanced from those who work tirelessly to create your food and dining experience but rather becoming part of their dance. You’ll mingle with James Chang, of J. Chang Kitchen chili oil fame, and not have a care in the world that the coals from the yakitori grill were lit a little too well and now there’s a smoky cloud hanging over the dining room (it’ll pass in just a few minutes).
Anjin is for the chefs, the bartenders, those who take your order and buss down your table. Just head in on a Monday night (comparable to a Saturday night for the hospitality industry) and you’ll see. Anjin is for people who love food and get lost in its senses and spirit. To make sure you don’t take yourself too seriously, there’s the soft serve ice cream—a popular offering in Japan, especially of the matcha variety, and the restaurant’s only dessert offering. Made by Nick’s sister and Antler Room’s pastry chef Natasha Goellner, it’s served at an awe-inspiring towering height and with layers of Japanese and Costco candy scattered about.
Anjin reminds us that the best restaurants offer fearless cooking and the diner a chance to eat with utter abandon. – Tyler Shane
INSIDER TIP: When you order sake, you’ll be presented with a large tray featuring tiny ceramic or porcelain cups, and you get to choose your favorite to drink from for the evening. However, if you opt for beer, I recommend a bottle of the Orion, a light rice lager from Okinawa.
No. 2 Nour’s
3855 Warwick Blvd., KCMO. nourskc.com.
Nour’s is open Tuesday–Friday from 11 am–9 pm,
Saturday from 10 am–9 pm and Sunday from 10 am–3 pm.
On 39th street, just a few blocks east of the streetcar stop on Main, chef Marwan Chebaro opened his new restaurant, Nour’s, as a space to bring people together. Named after his daughter, Nour, who passed away in 2018, the restaurant has lofty goals.
“We want to be part of the community,” Chebaro says. “Hospitality is very important in our culture. It’s not about the money. It’s about making people feel valued, respected and honored. We are here to serve our humanity and to take care of each other.”
Lebanese cuisine may have inspired the menu at Nour’s, but the dishes are Levantine, an Eastern Mediterranean tradition that spills across the lines on a map. “The cuisine is wholesome,” Chebaro says. “It’s historic. It’s been there for, really, a millennium. All cultures have dishes like these that never fade. They’re not a fad that becomes popular and then goes out of style. So why reinvent the wheel when the wheel is there?”
And the wheel is delicious. However old these recipes are, the flavors are stunning and novel. The baked feta tastes exquisitely rich and crisp on the outside while remaining creamy enough on the inside to pair with the crunchy house-fried za’atar chips. The roasted teardrop tomatoes and bits of mint scattered on the periphery shine.
Then there’s the mujadara. The fried onions and citrusy pickled cabbage of the rice and lentil dish serve as high points to the dish’s deep, toasty notes. The baharat spices accent the beef kebab in contrast to the sharp citrus and vinegar of the salad served with it. These dishes are so much more than just wholesome.
Nour means “light” in Arabic. As the restaurant’s website says, “Nour’s was born from loss but lives in love.” With the help of local designer John O’Brien, an interior designer for many of KC’s top restaurants, Nour’s is colorful, intentional and thoughtful. Come for a cup of coffee in the morning and leave something on the offering table—an altar of sorts that pays homage to Chebaro’s daughter—then come back for dinner with a date.
Between gathering food for recently overburdened food banks and organizing a weekly neighborhood farmer’s market for next spring, Chebaro is doing the work to make his space more than a restaurant. It’s a space for community where the fantastic food seems secondary. Almost. – Ryan Reed
INSIDER TIP: Do not skip the muhammara. This dark-red mixture of ground roasted red pepper is served with fluffy warm pita and crosses the spectrum from peppery to sweet to acidic. “This originated in Aleppo, Syria,” Chebaro says. “It’s roasted red peppers, walnuts, pomegranate, molasses, cinnamon, cumin and a little orange blossom water. There’s many versions of it. As a dish travels from one region to another, people adapt it to their own liking.”
No. 3 Northeast Pizza
2203 Lexington Ave., KCMO. northeastpizzakc.com.
Northeast Pizza is open Tuesday–Saturday from 11 am – 9 pm and Sunday from 11 am – 8 pm.
Is there anything more ubiquitous than a pizza shop? Not much. However, as it turned out, Pendleton Heights was lacking one, and Noah Quillec, one of the three owners of Northeast Pizza, decided to change that.
“I’ve been living in the Northeast for about eight years now and I was like: ‘You know, that’s what we need. That’s what the world needs, what Kansas City needs,’” Quillec says.
Quillec and his partners, Max Popoff and Michael DeStefano, are a trio of service and entertainment folks who, for various reasons, journeyed to New York, Chicago and San Francisco only to come back home to Kansas City. Quillec and DeStefano, who have both worked in the fine dining trenches of Michelin star restaurants, started looking at pizza—New York-style pizza, to be exact—as a way to bring high-quality but very accessible food to everyone.
“(DeStefano) was interested in this trend with people in the fine dining world getting back to a simpler food and taking away a lot of the rigmarole of the whole experience—doing a product that has those same standards but is more accessible to everyone all the time,” Quillec says.
The pizzeria feels like every neighborhood pizza shop, where the folks working are artists and in bands and the act of baking pies is a part of the creative journey. It’s one of those places where you can eat a delicious meal without feeling the need to act and look a certain way. Whether you’re a mail carrier, firefighter, a family with a gaggle of kids or a couple on date night, you’re going to fit in perfectly. Somewhere between the countertop Igloo cooler filled with sweating bottles of Peroni and Sharpie-drawn paper plates displaying the special of the day, Northeast Pizza tells you, “Have some pizza, you’re okay.”
The pizza, on the other hand, is better than okay. Although the expectations for pizza may be lower than other more elevated foods, I assure you a slice of Northeast pie can compete with some of the best fare out there. Their New York-style slice has the structure and the very important pizza foldability balanced almost to perfection. The supreme is hot and meaty with onions cooked crisp, just on this side of burnt. The mushrooms still retain their texture, and the sausage is fennel-packed. Then there is the jalapeno and pepperoni pizza drizzled with hot honey. The jalapenos sing in beautiful harmony with the honey’s sweetness. Some might say it borders on too hot, but like everything else at Northeast Pizza, I say it’s exactly where it needs to be. – Ryan Reed
INSIDER TIP: No one has ever said you can’t have a slice of pizza as an appetizer. You can order cheese and pepperoni by the slice or whatever flavor the kitchen might be experimenting with that day. Grab some friends and have some pizza before your pizza.
No. 4 Oil on Linen
4420 Warwick Blvd., KCMO. oil-on-linen.com.
Oil on Linen is open on Wednesday from 10 am–3 pm, Thursday–Friday from 10 am–3 pm and 4:30 to 9 pm, and Saturday–Sunday from 10 am–3 pm.
Chef Ted Habiger has a conversation with every artist putting on an exhibition at the Kemper Museum. Then, he creates art himself by turning their musings into a menu reflecting said art. It could be a palette of wild nettle salsa verde, maybe bison short ribs or quesadillas filled with butternut squash puree and huitlacoche (delicious corn fungus). The ever-changing menu of inspired dishes is then served up at the museum’s restaurant, Oil on Linen.
Much of Oil on Linen’s menu draws from Habiger’s love of regional cuisines in Mexico, where he also owns Ánima, an open-fire gastronomy restaurant in Yucatan, and an artist residency program, Casa Ocea (and let’s not forget Harbiger’s longstanding 39th Street institution Room 39). So while the closing of the Kemper’s beloved Café Sebastienne marked the end of an era, Habiger, eager to breathe new life into the museum restaurant, has managed to create a symbiotic relationship between food and art.
Currently, fluffy bits of masa wrapped in corn husks like candy wrappers and served with a plum-colored chokeberry jam and chili oil pay homage to artist Raven Halfmoon’s massive colonialist-subverting ceramic figures in her current exhibition, Ride or Die. Habiger continues to root into the artist’s indigenous background by featuring knobs of nutty sunchoke in nettle leek butter and a Three Sisters salad with butternut squash, hominy and heirloom beans—a traditional trio of vegetables in Native American cuisine. There’s also a massive 16-ounce beef ribeye with bison short ribs and a dramatic trout whose mouth gapes at you while you feast on its accompanying medley of bright greens and sweet potato puree.
The now-defunct Café Sebastienne specialized in breakfast and lunch and was hardly ever open for dinner. Oil on Linen is open most days of the week for breakfast and lunch, but dinner is only offered Thursdays and Fridays, and that’s precisely when you should go. Habiger hopes diners will inundate Oil on Linen for their evening meal, persuading the museum to expand security hours on other days and giving guests more opportunities to pair dinner with the rare chance to wander the galleries after dark. – Tyler Shane
INSIDER TIP: During the transformation of Oil on Linen, Matthew Ritchie’s Experienced Time painting that had hung on its east wall for more than 20 years was replaced by KC-based artist Kevin Townsend’s Set In Place (Mis En Place). The drawing is a performance that will take place over more than 200 hours, evolving with each dot capturing the cafe’s dynamic energy. Note how the piece changes each time you dine in.
No. 5 Akoya Omakase
106 W. 12th St., KCMO. akoyaomakase.com.
Akoya Omakase is open Monday–Saturday from 11 am–2 pm for lunch and 5–10 pm for dinner.
Peter Hoang doesn’t want you to know which Michelin star restaurants he’s worked at. Or their star rating.
When I interviewed Hoang for my review of his restaurant in October, he maintained that he wanted to avoid name-dropping his, ahem, very notable past. He’d rather start fresh at his restaurant inside downtown’s Hotel Phillips, unburdened by whatever assumptions his background might invite. So you’ll just have to trust me when I say Hoang has spent 22 years working in sushi—from Chicago to Jackson Hole to NYC—at some of the country’s best, and that his first-ever restaurant, Akoya Omakase, is one you’re going to want to visit.
Akoya has a whole dining room and a la carte menu for those looking for a more conventional dining experience, but the 10-seat sushi bar—where Hoang and his team delicately craft layers of fish and rice or dollop light pink slices of Tai sea bream (the chef’s favorite) with bits of shiso leaves and kelp salt—is where the magic really happens.
Omakase translates in Japanese to “I leave it up to you,” and at Akoya, it’s wise to do just that. Leave it up to Hoang and his team to serve you their best. Opt for the chef’s choice of sashimi, nigiri, hand-rolled temaki and miso soup. Intimidated? Don’t be. Hoang is intent that his restaurant—unlike many of the more traditional edomae-style restaurants he’s worked at, which are strict, only sourcing fish from Tokyo Bay and curing them as an homage to pre-Toyko sushi practices—is meant to be, above all, comfortable. So ask questions. Have your servers describe what you’re eating, how to eat it and what flavors to look for. They will happily oblige.
As Hoang packs each ball of rice with freshly shaven wasabi, tops it with a slice of soft pink yellowtail or fleshy sea bass and places it directly in front of me to be eaten just seconds later, he tells me the relationship between sushi bar chef and diner is intimate. This close relationship is built on trust, and at Akoya, that trust hinges on the ingredient at the center of it all: the fish.
Hoang uses two private fish buyers from Tokyo’s famous Toyosu Fish Market, whom he may or may not have worked with previously at several lauded establishments of the Michelin Tires variety. He sources everything from fatty bluefin tuna to golden eye snapper from his trusted purveyors, saying it makes all the difference.
Let the buttery slices of fish melt on your tongue and the grains of rice roll around. Pause while the sharp wasabi and salty five-year-aged soy sauce zap you back to reality. Wash it all down with a cool bottle of sake. Rinse and repeat. – Tyler Shane
INSIDER TIP: The Umi Omakase menu is a great place to start if you’re new to the omakase experience. It includes two sets of sashimi, eight pieces of nigiri, one hand-rolled temaki, miso soup and dessert, which upon one of my visits was a delightful chocolate crepe cake. At $85 for some of the best fish in town, it’s a steal.
No. 6 Al Beik
13135 State Line Road, KCMO. albeik.us.
Al Beik is open every day from 11 am–9 pm.
Follow the glowing red fez cap in a tucked-away shopping center off State Line in south KC and you’ll enter Al Beik, one of the city’s few Lebanese restaurants. The setup feels familiar enough—a small space with a handful of tables and bright TVs flashing the menu. But what sets Al Beik apart sits just behind the walk-up counter: a charcoal grill roaring with flames, charring eggplants and half chickens to smoky perfection.
Also behind the counter is the three-year-old son of Diana Ammar and Saleem Fahda, the wife and husband duo who own Al Beik along with Saleem’s brother, Ahmad. The son often rests near the cash register while Fahda works the front counter, suggesting meze platters and sandwiches for those who may have never had Lebanese food before. Ammar says her restaurant isn’t just Mediterranean or Middle Eastern; it’s distinctly representative of her roots in Beirut, Lebanon. The kebabs, stuffed into thin rounds of pita—the ideal vessel for juicy marinated meats, salads of herby tabbouleh and pita chip-spiked fattoush—all pay homage to Lebanon. The crunchy house-made falafel gently delivers Ammar’s blend of cumin, coriander and other spices. There’s rice on the menu and incorporated in several dishes, but well-seasoned fries accompany most of Al Beik’s meals (Ammar says Lebanese don’t eat much rice and that fries are more common in her home country, but the rice satisfies their Persian customers).
If you’re debating on an appetizer, Fahda will suggest the meze platter with baba ganoush (remember that roasted eggplant mentioned earlier?), hummus, glorious crispy fried cheese rolls, or rakakat, and sour pickled vegetables. For your entree, without a doubt, order the three grilled meats served with garlic sauce, a parsley and onion medley (biwaz salad), blistered onions and tomatoes, and pita bread, all on a hefty wooden cutting board. Let the not-too-sweet rice pudding round out the meal with its lush hint of rose water. – Tyler Shane
INSIDER TIP: When dining in, you’ll notice a wooden table covered with doodles and signatures from other diners. Ask one of the employees for a marker and leave your own mark. Ammar and her husband didn’t have time to refurbish the table before they opened, so they leaned into its rough charm and invited customers to make it their own. The tradition has since stuck, with the owners even bringing in a second table for customers to continue to draw on.
No. 7 Hank’s Garage & Grill
5801 Nieman Road, Shawnee, KS. hanksshawnee.com.
Hank’s is open Wednesday–Thursday from 11 am–midnight, Friday–Saturday from 11 am–1 am
and Sunday from 11 am–midnight.
Before it was Hank’s Garage and Grill, it was longtime auto shop Shawnee Automotive. With its concrete floors and wide windows, it was the kind of place where mechanics wiped their hands on their jeans and kept stories tucked in glove boxes. Since March of last year, however, patrons can now pull in and belly up for a sports bar experience, but one that’s more true to Historic Downtown Shawnee.
With sealed-in garage grime behind the bar, rafters overhead with just the right patina and the glow of two iconic Mobil Pegasus signs, Eric Flanagan’s first full-service operation is laid-back, retro and proudly scrappy. Flanagan, who also owns the Crossroads’ King G Bar & Delicatessen and Jim’s Alley Bar, tapped chef Howard Hanna as culinary director to move Hank’s beyond the typical bar food playbook. That looks like a hot dog program that includes a Sonoran-style dog, a Chicago dog and a rotating “Weenie of the Week.” Hanna and chef Zac Sachs spent months working on their signature smashburger, debatably one of the best in the city. But among these usual bar-and-grill-type comforts, there’s also homemade pastas, a blackened shrimp po’boy and the spam fries with banana ketchup (a standout from the beginning). It’s familiar but chef-driven. Comforting but interesting.
If you park at one of the blue vinyl seats bolted at the bar, you can indulge in a Tajin-rimmed Michelada, a Pink Pegasus with vodka and house-made strawberry cream soda, or a local beer. Sure, downtown Shawnee has steadily been on the rise thanks to Hank’s neighboring James Beard-nominated bars, but Flanagan’s spot is also for the families. The kids’ menu includes fried hot dogs cut in the shape of octopi.
Beyond Hank’s wood-paneled walls, there’s a patio shaped by a new outbuilding and converted shipping container. Turf lends itself to games of cornhole—or just kids running around. With its retro and vintage digs, Hank’s feels like it’s been a Shawnee fixture for much longer than 10 months, but Flanagan says that was the point all along.
“If we’ve done it right, Hank’s will feel like it’s always belonged in Shawnee,” he says. – Carmen Vajgrt
INSIDER TIP: Don’t let the fact that it’s January stop you from enjoying the outdoors at Hank’s. With winter enclosures and added seating, you can still hang out, watch a game on one of the many TVs and have beer.
No. 8 Luca Bagel
633 E. 63rd St., #110, KCMO. lucabagel.com.
Luca Bagel is open Tuesday–Friday from 6 am–3 pm and Saturday–Sunday from 7 am–3 pm.
Luke Salvatore is seeking the perfect bagel.
He says so on a crisp, clear fall day at Luca Bagel, the little bakery and sandwich shop he runs on the eastern edge of Brookside. Salvatore says he started making bagels for the most obvious reason: He wanted to eat them. Specifically, he wanted to relive the culinary experiences of his youth on the eastern seaboard, as he used to to spend summers in southern New Jersey and Thanksgivings in New Jersey’s Bergen County.
After finding his way to KC and opening Providence Pizzeria Co. with his brother, Aaron, Salvatore became nostalgic for the taste of his childhood, so he began trying his hand at East Coast-style bagels in 2022 at the pizzeria.
“We didn’t really have the equipment we needed,” Salvatore says, “so we were using a stock pot and our pizza ovens and continually producing what I thought was an inferior bagel.”
Eventually, equipped with a right-sized kettle and an oven with rotating decks, the brothers started selling bagels at the Overland Park Farmers’ Market. It was an immediate success; they sold out every weekend. After three seasons in OP, Salvatore decided to try a brick-and-mortar, ending up on 63rd Street in a space formerly occupied by Mattie’s Foods. Just like the farmers market, the Brookside store has been a hit, with—be forewarned—long lines every weekend.
That success, however, is no surprise. The man is seeking greatness. Over and over while describing his work, Salvatore uses language that one might hear from an artist or philosopher. He talks about the “concept of the bagel,” almost like it’s a platonic ideal. He speaks of “trying to fulfill the potential for what a bagel could be.” Twice he uses the word “dream” to describe his quest for bagel excellence. The word “maximize” came up twice as well, as in “caring enough about the bagel to maximize everything at your disposal.”
A huge part of that bagel-maxing is, of course, using the best possible ingredients. Consider Luca Bagel’s take on the quintessential offering from any bagel shop: bagel and lox with a schmear. Luca uses Nova lox cold-smoked salmon and slices it by hand, along with whipped Philadelphia cream cheese, heirloom tomatoes, red onions, thin-sliced English cucumbers and Roland Organic non-pareil capers.
Then, of course, there is the handrolled New Jersey-style bagel itself, which includes 100 percent organic liquid barley malt in the dough. The team makes sure the dough has time to ferment to let the bagel become the truest, most bagel-y version of itself.
The result is glorious. These are not the flat, bready things you’re likely to get from a grocery store bakery. Luca Bagels feel alive. They’re plump, tall, dense and chewy with an especially shiny, crispy crust.
Is all that effort and expense really necessary? Maybe not. But then it wouldn’t be the best bagel that it can possibly be. That’s what Salvatore cares about. You can hear it when he talks about bagels. More importantly, you can taste it when you eat one. – Hampton Stevens
INSIDER TIP: Lines are long at Luca, especially on the weekends. Pop in during the week for a shorter wait time.
No. 9 Sour Rabbit
7715 N.W. Prairie View Road, KCMO. @sour_rabbit_bakery.
Sour Rabbit is open Tuesday–Sunday from 7:30 am–2:30 pm.
Can a bakery be considered a restaurant? Truthfully, I don’t care to debate the logistics. Sour Rabbit, the Northland’s new sourdough bakery, has seating, coffee on tap and a display case offering some of the best baked goods you can find north of the river. And that’s enough for me.
Atsuko Hammann and her husband, Rolf, opened their hidden bakery, situated off 29 Highway and N.W. Prairie View Road, in March in a mixed-use building housing an insurance office and cell phone repair store. The bakery sells out of its almond croissants, orange zest-topped scones infused with earthy sage, streusel cakes, pink peppercorn artisan bread loaves and other pastries often.
The flavors of both Atsuko and Rolf’s home countries (Atsuko from Hokkaido, Japan; Rolf from Gross-Gerau, Germany) make appearances throughout Sour Rabbit’s menu. On one visit, I ordered a sweet red bean mochi cake (a slightly nutty and delightfully sweet mini pie-like pastry), a Basque cheesecake and a Swedish cinnamon swirl. For the most part, all these pastries have one thing in common—their gluten-y fermentation base.
Each flour-dusted loaf of bread comes with that dynamite texture that fueled the 2020 sourdough baking frenzy—an ultra-toasty chestnut-colored crust that envelopes a soft pillowy inside. The ingredients—water, locally milled Marion Milling flour, and time—are minimal but full of depth, tang and chew. I’ve begun to even prefer Hammann’s light and crisp bagels over the dense styles coming to our city from the East Coast. – Tyler Shane
INSIDER TIP: Check Instagram for rare gems like Japanese-inspired egg salad stuffed inside a sourdough croissant for an awe-inspiring sandwich.
No. 10 1587 Prime
1500 Baltimore Ave., KCMO. 1587prime.com.
1587 Prime is open Monday–Thursday from 4:30–10 pm and Friday–Sunday from 4:30–11 pm.
Whether you love the Kansas Chiefs or love to hate them, or whether you’re a self-proclaimed foodie or prefer to keep matters of the palate more simple, it hardly matters. If you live in Kansas City or even vaguely follow its cultural orbit, you’ve heard of 1587 Prime, the glossy new steakhouse backed by superstar duo Patrick Mahomes (No. 15) and Travis Kelce (No. 87).
Located just outside the Loews Hotel, the two-story steakhouse made an immediate and unavoidable splash. Vocalist Chanteuse Tayla Rae Groves weaves through the dining room, serenading you while you feast on Wagyu New York strips and linger over cocktails lit aflame in the name of world-renowned popstar (and Kelce’s fiancee) Taylor Swift. Servers in fitted blazers hustle past marble columns. It’s all a big-city spectacle that feels larger than life. With the partnership of international hospitality group Noble 33, 1587 Prime makes subtle nods to its celebrity owners while keeping old school steakhouse glamour at its core.
The menu stays true to classic steakhouse fare: wedge salads, oysters, black truffle compound butters and Wagyu cuts sourced from cities ranging from Melba, Idaho, to Victoria, Australia. But there’s also the opportunity to make a few theatrical choices, like opting for the martini cart or a tableside brandy-induced flambé. There’s a cheeky ketchup flight that nods to Mahomes’ infamous admittance of eating ketchup with his steak and the Big Yeti cocktail, a smokey riff on an old fashioned, honoring Kelce. In all its grandeur, desserts are kept local and sourced from beloved McClain’s bakery.
That said, for all its polish and promise, 1587 Prime is still finding its footing. The restaurant remains wildly popular (so much so that getting a seat at the bar proved impossible on more than one attempt, and reservations have been booked full for months), but that popularity currently seems driven more by curiosity, celebrity and convention traffic than by repeat-visit devotion from locals. Does 1587 Prime’s food and service surpass the city’s many excellent steakhouses? At just four months old, it may be too soon to tell, but on some of our most recent visits, it hasn’t yet. Still, few restaurants in Kansas City have made a louder entrance.
Whether 1587 Prime evolves into a date night go-to or settles into its role as a one-time splurge remains to be seen. What’s undeniable is its impact: a restaurant so buzzy it made national headlines in People and The Cut and so emblematic of Kansas City’s growing cultural confidence that ignoring it would feel like an omission. Growing pains and all, 1587 Prime is a spectacle this city was bound to have, where steaks, sports and pop culture all collide under one very bright spotlight. Look at how far we’ve come, KC. – Kansas City Magazine Team
INSIDER TIP: Struggling to book a reservation? Pop in to see if you can snag a spot at the bar. And mind the dress code: business casual or dressy evening, unless it’s game day. Then that Chiefs jersey is practically part of the uniform.
