Westport Cafe and Bar The mussels with sweet corn, cilantro and coconut curry at the WCB. The Westport Cafe and Bar (419 Westport Road) is in the midst of a four-day celebration in honor of Bastille Day that culminates with a party on Sunday. The Westport restaurant has a three-course prix fixe dinner for the next three days. So you…
Looking for a KC Ice Water. I had to move to State College, Pennsylvania, to taste the Kansas City Ice Water. The concoction mingles vodka and gin with a splash or two of Sprite and enough lime juice to make it cloudy. (This murkiness is the source of the cocktail’s name; East Coasters apparently believe that KC’s water comes straight…
Ashford Stamper Ring. Ring, ring, ring, ring, ring, ring. “Hana’s Donuts. Best doughnuts in the city.” Beep. So it goes when you dial 913-362-0244 late in the afternoon to ask what tomorrow’s hours are. You need to know how early a sour-cream old-fashioned can be had. The voice on what sounds like the city’s last analog answering machine is a…
Kansas City Museum The Kansas City Museum is a colder place than we thought. The same afternoon that George Gustello, president and CEO of Union Station, fired Kansas City Museum employee Christopher Leitch – who has been called both director and house director of the Kansas City Museum in different reports – he sent an e-mail to the rest of…
Footprint Books Le Fete Nationale – the day that French citizens honor the storming of the 1789 Bastille prison – is always July 14th, but some Kansas City restaurateurs like to give the holiday a few extra days of festivities. Pastry chef Carter Holton may be better known for his creme brulee than his vocal talents, but he’ll be belting…
Missouri State Archives In 1933, the only Swope Park picnic shelter available to African-Americans was called Watermelon Hill One of the first things that Joelouis Mattox learned from his Phi Beta Signa fraternity brothers at Lincoln College: “You never eat watermelon in front of a white person.” This was the 1950s, and Mattox quickly understood the meaning: Don’t set yourself…
Sporting KC C.J. Sapong is heading to the minors. In a surprising move Thursday, Sporting Kansas City announced that it has sent forward C.J. Sapong to its minor league affiliate Orlando City. Sapong arrived in Kansas City with high expectations in 2011, and he succeeded immediately by scoring just 43 seconds into his first MLS game. He went on to…
Flickr: Orin Zebest It’s like Christmas in July for stoners. Faux food holidays occasionally come with real world perks. Today is July 11 or as its known in the convenience industry: Free Slurpee Day. 7-Eleven (you can find local stores here) is celebrating its calendar doppelganger with its annual tradition of giving out free neon-colored ice drinks to everybody that…
Just head to Martin City and look for the big cow. The Kansas City steakhouse is back. Jess & Jim’s Steakhouse (517 E. 135th St.) was recently named to The Daily’s Meal’s list of “America’s 20 Best Steakhouses.” The Martin City institution comes in at number nine in the rankings with points for its hand-cut steaks and Kansas beef: In…
Apple Pie milk can still be found on the shelves. Supermarket cashiers are perhaps the last great bastion of food tasters. While they won’t insult your purchases, most will give you an honest take on the food coming down the conveyor belt if you’re willing to ask. So, yesterday, I asked for my cashier’s take on Shatto’s Apple Pie Milk…
The new movie by the visionary fantasist Guillermo del Toro evaporates like seawater before you can finish wiping salt off your 3-D glasses. In CGI scale and body count and decibel peak, it’s both epic and indistinct — just this week’s enormo-budget summer leviathan, the kind of thing that sends you to Wikipedia three or four times the next morning…
In 2005, Kansas City was going through a phase of serious self-improvement. No longer satisfied with tumbleweeds being the only things hanging around downtown after 5 p.m., city officials went on a spending spree to make people — and their dollars — linger under the skyscrapers. In May ’05, the construction euphoria reached its zenith. Then-Mayor Kay Barnes and City…
A school-bus-yellow excavator breaks the bones of the Orion Pictures Building on an overcast late-April morning. The digger claws the building’s interior walls and nudges the ceiling, each blow releasing drifts of 57-year-old dust — final gasps from an architectural carcass. By late morning, piles of mangled metal, brick and plaster litter the lot at the corner of 17th Street…
If I may impart just one thing to you about the Shot Stop, let it be this: The Waldo bar serves a shot called Susie’s Asshole. In Susie’s Asshole are Bacardi 151, Tabasco and Worcestershire sauce. I ordered one. I tasted Susie’s Asshole. It tasted like shit. Those who pay attention to yuppie-foodie culture know all about mixology and limited-release…
During the jazz heyday of the 1930s and ’40s, Kansas City’s Pete Johnson helped popularize a wild brand of swing — boogie-woogie, stride piano, barrelhouse blues. Today, another Kansas Citian — by way of the Netherlands — keeps the style fresh in some of the same neighborhoods where Johnson swung. Bram Wijnands’ rollicking piano opens the night every Sunday at…
It’s 9:30 on a recent Thursday night at the Riot Room. The crowd is sparse, but the few people in attendance seem to know one another. A verse of “Roads” by Portishead fades from the overhead speakers as the evening’s first act, Y Fri, takes the stage. Most of those in attendance appear to be there for Max Justus, who…
Matchbox Twenty, with Goo Goo Dolls The song “Real World” by Matchbox Twenty (formerly Matchbox 20; keep it straight, y’all) hit the airwaves back in 1998. That means I’ve been doing an impression of Rob Thomas singing, in his stupid voice, I wonder what it’s like to be the head honcho for roughly 15 years. It’s been a wild ride! It…
Gary Worden had a problem. The Parkville businessman owns the two-story building in Briarcliff Village where he moved his popular Argentinian restaurant, Piropos, in 2007. When one of his tenants, an art gallery, closed last year, Worden and his wife, Cristina, turned the small space into a piano bar. “We thought it would be a nice place for our dinner…
Glen Hansen’s representational paintings convey a straightforward premise: that the soul of a city is reflected in its architecture. On his canvases, the Manhattan, New York, artist has captured the iron-and-concrete identities of New York City, Paris, Venice, Prague — and now, Kansas City. His latest collection, at the Central Library, culls 30 graphite and oil drawings featuring iconic KC…
Sabrina Staires This old building won’t become an homage to the suburbs. The most prominent obituary in Tuesday’s Kansas City Star was written by Steve Rose. It announced the death of the National Museum of Suburbia idea in Overland Park. Rose reported on comments made by Ed Eilert, chairman of the Johnson County Board of Commissioners, who said at a…
Steven Fruitsmaak/Wikinews Cast away. The 2013 Pitch Music Awards ballot is out today. Perhaps some local acts you like are on it and you want to support them by voting for them? You can do so by pressing in this spot. Online voting is live until August 2. Speaking of August 2: That’s the date of The Pitch Music Showcase,…
