A selection of the city’s most interesting food and drink news.
Boiling Up
Kansas City has another option for authentic boiled-then-baked bagels. Providence Pizza has launched its own pop-up bagel concept making “Jersey-inspired” bagels on Saturday mornings.
Luca Bagel was inspired by family trips back to Jersey, where the mother of Providence co-owners Aaron and Luke Salvatore came from.
“My fondest bagel memories come from being in New Jersey as a kid,” Luke says. “A big, fat, puffy bagel with excessive amounts of cream cheese.”
For the Salvatores, “there’s no difference in my mind between an NY and NJ bagel.” Some very nerdy bagel people will say that Jersey bagels tend to be a little puffier.
Luca Bagel uses a wild yeast starter supplemented with commercial yeast, though Luke Salvatore says he’s not opposed to moving toward totally naturally leavened bagels. The bagels undergo a two-day fermentation process so, he says, “they’re going to have that flavor and digestibility that comes with long fermentation.”
“We hand roll all of our bagels as opposed to using a machine, which helps give it that look,” says.
Providence is offering the bagels at its locations in Grandview and Westport on Saturday mornings until noon.
No Limits
Limitless Brewing was Lenexa’s first brewery, and it has enjoyed being tucked away in an industrial park just west of I-35. With little signage and no foot traffic from the neighboring HVAC contractor or the maker of stadium chairs, most patrons found the microbrewery by word of mouth.
Now Limitless is more recognizable, with a new location at 9500 Dice Lane in Lenexa. The new location is only a half-mile away from the old one, but it’s right off 95th Street.
Emily Mobley, one of the four owners of Limitless, says the new space is much larger and complete with a large outdoor patio. It offers an opportunity to add more fermenters in the future. Limitless is also adding permanent food options in partnership with Point and Flat BBQ. Thursdays will feature barbecue nachos, Fridays will feature barbecue pizza, and Saturdays will offer barbecue all day. There will be new brews along with the move—because there always are. “The brewery almost never makes the same beer twice,” Mobley says.
City Station
In other beer news, the venerable Waldo beer bar Bier Station closes December 31 and will become a taproom for Crossroads’ City Barrel Brewing.
For the past decade, Bier Station has been KC’s embassy for craft beer culture—a staple on national lists of notable beer bars and the place where brands were launched into the local market and visiting beer geeks stopped for a session.
Former owner John Couture told us that it was time for a change. “This is a good thing,” he says. “I know it’s sad for a lot of people, including me, but if anyone knows Bier Station, they know how important political activism and community engagement have gotten for the business, and that’s something I want to spend more time doing.”
The beer scene has changed a lot in the decade since Bier Station opened—we’ve witnessed the rise and fall of the beer buyer as rockstar, the collapse of dedicated beer media under the weight of apps and IPAs going from a little hazy to very clear to very hazy to filled with children’s cereal to clear again to even more clear.
Microbreweries were the center of beer culture at the start of the American craft movement and have risen again of late, something that impacted Couture’s decision to move on. “People are going to beer bars less and breweries more,” he says. “So that has been a huge movement since we’ve opened. The beer scene is really changing, and the way that I view it is when people like to drink beer, they like to go to breweries now.”
Posting Up
Outpost Social Club in the Westside neighborhood has been serving dinner and late-night eats since it opened in July of 2021. The sister business of hip nightspot Panther’s Place has now added breakfast and lunch, with options like smothered biscuits and gravy, pizzas with roasted garlic and mushrooms. The pivot was instigated by chefs Rachael West and Gunner Hawkins, who took over the kitchen last March.
West and Hawkins, who are engaged, both went to Le Cordon Bleu College of Culinary Arts in St. Louis and have been sous chefs at both of Michael Smith’s restaurants, Extra Virgin and Farina. Along with coffee drinks, a full bar offers craft cocktails such as bloody marys and mimosas. Morning familiars like egg sandwiches and crispy hash browns are on the menu along with Rachael’s freshly baked pastries. As for lunch, there are smash burgers, sauteed shrimp po’boys and fries.
Despite the fairly typical menu of breakfast and lunch items, Potpost owner Ryan Gale provides eggs from his chickens, and tomatoes and fresh herbs come from his garden. “We’ve worked in simpler places, and we’ve also worked in five-star restaurants. One thing we’ve learned in our careers is, yeah, people like fancy fine dining, but if you do something simple and you do it very well, people tend to like that better.”
Little Book
The owner of the local coffee spot Slow Bar has partnered with Blackhole Bakery to open a new coffee shop, Novella. Novella is owned by Joshua Bella and is now open in the West Bottoms, inside Charmed House Interiors (previously known as The Painted Sofa) at 1331 Union Ave., KCMO.
Whereas Slow Bar is a minimalist West Coast concept inspired by Bella’s California roots, Novella encompasses a traditional cafe atmosphere with maximalist decor, reflecting the industrial neighborhood it resides in.
“It’s going to have more of a Great Gatsby design scheme and color palette, so really moody and dark with brass and wood tones,” Bella says. “Just a really cool ode to the history of the West Bottoms.
A partnership with Blackhole Bakery on Troost has been consistent in Bella’s coffee concepts. Novella will open with pastries from the beloved bakery but has plans to create more substantial grab-and-go options, eventually serving a full breakfast and lunch menu curated by Jason Provo, owner of Blackhole. The house espresso blend is a single-origin Columbian from the Nariño region roasted in collaboration with Marcell Coffee.
