Seeking Transcendence:  An Analytical Framework for Choosing Kansas City BBQ

You’re an out-of-town traveler.  Maybe you’re a Jets fan, flying in for the weekend to watch your favorite team get slaughtered by the Chiefs.  Maybe you’re a Cardinals fan, braving a mind-numbing I-70 drive across Missouri for a weekend series in your slightly less populated, but culturally and athletically superior, sister city, with nothing to distract you from the cold reality that Don Denkinger was right.  Or maybe you’re simply an ordinary human, brought to our fair city for mundane business or a reunion with family and friends.  Whatever your reason, you will inevitably, as sure as the sun will rise, ask your closest KC confidantes or, in the absence of such connections, lob desperate queries into the dark and unforgiving void of the Internet, to answer a single, identical question:  Where should we eat BBQ?

You will get answers.  My God, you will get answers!  Kansas City has a preposterously deep BBQ bench, where the 10^th-best BBQ here is better than the top-rated BBQ in most cities.  You’ll hear, without question, that you should eat at the Joe’s gas station (not the suburban outposts) and order the Z-Man and fries.  You’ll read about the Jack Stack beans.  You’ll be hit by freight trains of simmering to nuclear-grade takes, depending on the source, regarding Bryant’s vs. Gates; where reputationally A-minus BBQ like Haywards belongs in the canon; and the comparative quality of Q-39. 

Many of these takes will be correct, in the sense that taste is relative and the quality of food at our best restaurants is almost unimaginably high; some of them, of course, will be deeply, unfathomably wrong.  But few of these takes will give guidance, at least not in usable form, for the person looking to eat at, say, two BBQ restaurants (not ten) over a long weekend, to leave room to experience the city’s non-BBQ offerings while not falling asleep for the entire weekend or potentially dying.

This hypothetical traveler—this symbol, in a sense, of our collective aspiration to process tsunamis of information to make sound choices—needs a decision calculus, an analytical framework, to narrow and inform this BBQ journey.  There is, fortunately, a path forward for our traveler, an approach to choosing that will move our visitor inexorably forward, from the gray fog of a constellation of seemingly impossible choices, and into the light.

Our traveler should apply a two-stage analysis:  First, does the restaurant offer a truly transcendent dish—a “last meal” type of offering one could credibly claim they would eat before anything else before they died, and that unequivocally has not been and could never imaginably be replicated anywhere else to a similar level of quality.  Second, does the restaurant offer a sufficient breadth of near-transcendent dishes to complement the transcendent offering. 

This is the appropriate framework.  There is no other way. Ask yourself this – what are you looking for in a BBQ experience?  What do you want to remember, a week later?  A month later?  A year later?  Do you simply want to remember that you ate great food, that it was some of the best BBQ you’ve had, and that you had fun?  Or, do you want to remember that you ate great food, that it was some of the best BBQ you’ve had, that you had fun, and that in consuming an offering that was so unequivocally superior, that was so indisputably better than literally anything else you could have eaten that night, that you touched the face of the sun and even, perhaps, if the stars aligned, the face of God?  Great BBQ is like seeing the Kinks in their prime.  Transcendent BBQ is like seeing the Beatles in their prime.  Should we be so lucky, we should search for the transcendent like a heat-seeking missile, and hope it lands.  With that in mind, here is where you should eat. 

• Restaurant 1.  Jack Stack.  The beans are transcendent.  They’re beyond transcendent.  They are my single favorite item of food, of any style or preparation, anywhere in the world.  I would eat a vat of them (and only them) for my last meal, and then I would ask to be buried in them.  They taste like the damn brisket and have a depth and layer of sweet and smoky flavor that makes you absolutely collapse.  Do not order one small side of beans at Jack Stack.  Order five large sides, plus one small side of cheesy corn.  Order perfectly executed onion rings to start.  And order burnt ends for the table and either a Poor Russ (chopped burnt end sandwich) or the Smokin Russ (same sandwich but with jalapenos, spicy sauce, and cheese—my personal favorite) for yourself.  Eat at the Freight House location.  Jack Stack satisfies both predicates of the above analytical framework—a transcendent dish (the beans) and an excellent supporting cast.  Eat here.

• Restaurant 2.  Joe’s.  The transcendent dish is the Z-Man.  This is a sandwich with thin-sliced brisket, smoked provolone, and perfectly executed onion rings on a Kaiser roll (an independently excellent choice).  A bite never pulls out the entire onion, reflecting the perfection of the cook.  This is not just BBQ’d meat; it’s a transcendent dish in sandwich form, with every component perfectly complementing the other.  All that said, I’m going to engage in a slight form of apostasy—in my view, the sandwich is a little, ever-so-slightly, just barely . . . under-sauced.  That’s okay!  They have free sauce!  All I’m saying is to make the sandwich perfect, they should add a little more sauce!  And you can do that yourself!  In so doing, you will make the sandwich transcendent.  The fries are the only justifiable supporting cast (they are the best fries in the city, coated in Joes’ BBQ seasoning, and they are offered in an approximately gallon-sized bag), with a slab of ribs for the table.

So those are two restaurants.  Good for you!  You will enjoy your trip!  And you will know, without hesitation, that your dining experience was sublime.  There is an honorable mention (Bryant’s), but first we need an interlude on ribs.  I find it challenging to distinguish between ribs at the best Kansas City BBQ restaurants.  Even when a friend of mine visited and we went on a six-restaurant BBQ Tour over 24 hours (talk about nearly dying) and ordered ribs from everywhere (Gates, Bryant’s, Jack Stack, Joe’s, Q39, Woodyard), every dang rib was gently-pull-off-the-bone tender (word to the wise – if it’s “fall off the bone,” you over-cooked them) and intensely flavorful.  There were subtle differences between the first five, sure.  And Woodyard ribs are unique, with turmeric, cardamom, and cloves, and are worth a visit if you live here and have nothing else to do on a random summer Saturday.  The other ribs should be ordered as a slab for the table, to complement each diner’s individual order.  But the point is, in my view, ribs are too consistently well-executed here to move the needle on restaurant selection. 

And now for the honorable mention above – the third (and last) truly transcendent, approaching-the-divine dish you’ll find in the broad and diverse KC BBQ scene:  The Bryant’s beef sandwich.  It’s sliced deli thin and served on wonder bread.  The thin slice ensures intense juiciness, even for the leaner cuts.  Your knees will buckle on bite one and you’ll collapse with fatigue by bite thirty.  Ask for extra slices of bread and extra sauce to make mini sandwiches with the overflow.  It is the best beef sandwich in the city and one of the best BBQ items I have ever had.  The only issue, and it’s a big one, is that none of the Bryant’s sides are worth writing home about.  They’re all fine.  But you’re not after “fine.”  You’re after flavor explosions.  So go for the beef sandwich and eat a slab of ribs, and eschew the Bryant’s sides.  Because of this dark reality, Bryant’s fails part 2 of the analytical framework.  Eat here, but not before the other two.

So here you are.  Your weekend is over!  And you have only scratched the surface of Kansas City BBQ.   There are so many places to eat.  Here are notes on a few others, for your return or extended trip. 

• Gates.  The ribs are legendary (I prefer the short-end).  (But see above the note on ribs.)  They actually had the favorite burnt ends of the aforementioned BBQ tour, though prepared non-traditionally (chopped thin, not served cubed). 

• Q39.  This is a new-ish player with justifiable acclaim.  They offer a playful, modern spin on classic KC BBQ (think “pork belly and sausage corn dogs”) as well as excellent versions of Kansas City classics (e.g., burnt ends).  Certain Chiefs players rank this the number 1 BBQ restaurant in Kansas City.  Unfortunately, Q39 lacks a transcendent dish.  This was verified by the aforementioned BBQ Tour participants and a return trip with my family.  Many will argue I am giving Q39 short shrift.  I am not.  Q39 is amazing and you should absolutely eat here . . . just not on a weekend where you’re only picking two restaurants. 

• Hayward’s.  Growing up, I only ate Hayward’s at funerals.  It’s always been viewed as second-tier BBQ.  But I recently revisited Hayward’s, and ate perfect ribs, A-minus beans that I’ve shockingly concluded are the second-best beans in the city next to Jack Stack (I suspect they are intentionally derivative), and nicely executed fries.  Thursdays offer $19.99 slabs of ribs.  Eat here!

• McGonigle’s KC BBQ (inside Fareway Meat Market, a local butcher).  This is a butcher who bought a smoker and serves cheap BBQ sandwiches.  The brisket sandwich is thin-sliced, juicy, and explosively flavorful, and is, in my view, when appropriately sauced (which you apply yourself), the second-best pure beef sandwich in the city next to Bryant’s. 

• Plowboys.  Kidding!  Their BBQ sucks!  It was all tender, but perplexingly flavorless.  It would be impossible, even in an eternal life, to justify walking into Plowboys given the diversity of alternative quality offerings in this city.

Happy eating!  And welcome to KC Food Riot!