Author: Allison Hall

Southern cooking is complicated for lots of reasons. No one can deny that, whatever you call it—soul, Southern, comfort—dishes like fried pig tails have roots in slavery. It’s too much to unpack here, but it’s well worth acknowledging before heaping praise on a new restaurant where so much of the menu comes from Southern foodways. At Lula Southern Cookhouse, pig tails are the second best-selling appetizer, right behind the blue crab pimento cheese fritter. Other comfort food staples—blackened catfish, gumbo gravy—are stacked on the menu at prices no one charges for comfort food (the baked mac and cheese is twenty-four…

Grandview’s Main Street is a little sleepy. The small stretch is home to a barber shop, a model train store and a Mexican restaurant with a dilapidated awning (it’s called the Corner, and its house-made corn tortillas are worth a visit). Kip Unruh, president of Grandview’s Main Street Group, says it won’t always look like this. There are big plans to revitalize the small Missouri town, just twelve miles south of Kansas City. But you’ve got a good reason (besides the DMV) to make the trek now: Housewife. Housewife is a totally unexpected scratch-made breakfast and lunch spot at 801…

Since Kelly’s Westport Inn opened in one of Kansas City’s oldest buildings at the intersection of Westport Road and Pennsylvania Avenue in 1947, the district has seen many iterations of its identity—from family-friendly shopping destination (Pryde’s has operated since 1968) to hip restaurant harbor (RIP Prospect of Westport) to late-night party precinct (Johnny Kaw’s and the other Johnny Kaw’s). Lately, the neighborhood seems to have more appeal to out-of-town developers than locals: Denver-based Atomic Provisions took over the former City Ice House building in the summer of 2020. This spring, Nashville-based Tin Roof, an indoor-outdoor music venue, will open where…

Here is a little cafe in Kraków’s Old Town: Its neat tables spill out into the street, waiters in starched aprons bustle about with wine bottles, and dishes that have sold out are crossed off the chalkboard menu. I idled there for an entire afternoon several years ago, sipping coffee and Zubrówka. I can’t remember the name of the place, and I can only remember some of what I ate, but I can recall exactly how I felt—like I had been going there for years. Photography by Caleb Condit & Rebecca Norden. For many old-style European cafes, the food is nothing revolutionary. The magic is in the…

When he was growing up in Saigon, Zen Nguyen’s typical breakfast was pho. He would walk to one of the food stalls in his neighborhood and pay the equivalent of twenty-five cents for a hot bowl of pho. Most shops would open at dawn and sell out by mid-morning. But that was almost two decades ago, Nguyen says. These days, a bowl of pho in Vietnam’s bustling former capital city will set you back about two dollars. As enterprising shop owners have noted the popularity of pho among the younger generation, plenty open back up for lunch or dinner. A…

The house at 815 W. 17th St. was never meant to be a restaurant.  Built at the turn of the twentieth century, the architecture of this historic Westside structure is probably still best suited to its original purpose—a duplex. The granite steps that lead from the sidewalk to the front door are narrow and steep. A catalpa tree takes up a sizable portion of the patio, which can accommodate a handful of tables. The upstairs bathroom still holds a clawfoot tub. And on busy nights, the charmingly petite interior can feel claustrophobic.  Such complaints drove numerous former tenants (Novel, Fox & Pearl)…

I remember it like this: Taxco was very hot that day, and my host family had asked if I wanted to attend Sunday evening church services with them. Catholic guilt is as powerful as they say. In my childhood, mass was a well-timed sixty minutes, but this seemed interminable. I told my host mother that I had a headache and excused myself to absently wander the cobblestone streets. I stopped at a tiendita and grabbed a snack—a cellophane package printed with a blue and white geisha. Odd for Mexico, but I had been seeing these cacahuates japonés everywhere. I stood…

Pizza Hawk KC’s best pizza slice is coming to Overland Park (6705 W. 119th St.) and Lawrence (1004 Massachusetts St.) as Erik Borger opens a third and fourth branch of Pizza Tascio, his stellar New York-style joint. “I’ve always liked the vibe in Lawrence,” Borger says. “Mass Street has always had a buzz to it. Being from New York, I’m a sucker for foot traffic, and there’s a lot of that there.” Borger has locations in St. Joseph and North KC, both of which have a lot of long-term staffers who are close-knit and all graduating at the same time.…

The former HopCat space is now home to a massive new nightclub for the LGBTQIA+ community. Fountain Haus has four separate bars spread over thirteen thousand square feet. “Bars and spaces moving forward need to be for everyone,” co-owner Ryan Overberg said on a recent edition of our podcast, Kansas City’s Only Podcast. “We need to create spaces that are a hybrid for the entire LGBTQIA+ community because there should be a place that we can all play together in the sandbox. That’s what we did here, I believe—we built a space that’s catering to everyone.” So far the favorite…

Chingu, a new Westport spot from the team behind Sura eats, will combine Korean street food and soju brewed and distilled for the house. Chef and co-owner Keeyoung Kim says that for the Sura Eats team, which operates a popular stall at the Parlor food hall in the Crossroads, the full-service Chingu has “been our vision from the get-go.” “As soon as people enter we want them to be transported to a place,” he says. “We want our guests to feel like friends who have been invited to our home. We know some of the flavors will be unfamiliar. After…