Where to eat on Central Avenue, quite possibly the most exciting culinary thoroughfare in the metro
Cruise down the seventeen or so blocks that make up Central Avenue, near downtown Kansas City, and you’ll see what can happen when an immigrant community finds a welcoming home. This commercial stretch is largely free from the dull and oppressive hand of corporate influence. Instead, you find dress shops overflowing with tulle and sequins, the customers excitedly anticipating quinceañeras and weddings. Down the street are locally owned electronics shops, pawn shops, auto shops, thrift stores. There’s even a farmer’s market run by refugees.
Central is also chockablock with delicious food. You can find sample, at affordable-as-hell prices, some of the city’s finest tacos, seafood, cakes, Honduran food — the list goes on. Here are a few of our favorites.
Supermart El Torito
A steady, heavy stream of customers files in and out of Supermart El Torito all day, every day. The grocery store is small by the mammoth standards of suburban Hy-Vees and Price Choppers. But it wants for nothing, its shelves generously stacked floor to ceiling with imported canned goods, hot sauces, snacks, and sweets. There are house-made tortilla chips and fresh-baked items in the panaderia. The carniceria, though, is the store’s biggest draw. Customers pull a number when they arrive and wait for one of several butchers to get around to cleavering their order. However long it takes, it’s worth it: the shop keeps an impressive stock of beef, pork, and chicken cuts, including diezmillo (shoulder cuts minus the roast), flap steak, chicken wings, beef tongue, and ready-to-cook foods including pineapple- and guajillo chile-seasoned al pastor pork. Too lazy to cook? Head next door to the El Torito taqueria. We can’t resist the tacos, but don’t sleep on the tortas, chilaquiles, or whole fried fish, either.
1409 Central, eltoritosupermart.com
El Pollo Guasave
El Pollo Guasave is easy to miss — the yellow, walk-up chicken stand isn’t much more than a kitchen with a window — but if you like perfectly-seasoned, fall-off-the-bone charcoal-grilled chicken, it is well worth a stop. For just $6.75, you can pick up a half chicken (breast, thigh, wing leg) plus rice, beans, tortillas, and salsa. The chickens are prepped Sinaloa style: marinated in orange, garlic, herbs, and salt before being thrown over charcoal and open flame. The result is a charry, crispy greatness that you really can’t find anywhere else in town. This little place has heart, too: we recently witnessed some pay-what-you-can action with a customer who needed a bite on a cold day.
1600 Central, on Facebook
Sabor Centroamericano
Sabor Centroamericano is one of the few restaurants in the city that offers Honduran dishes, from familiar offerings like carne asada with rice and beans to far less common items like Pata de Cerdo con Tajadas (pig’s trotters with plantains). El Salvadoran and Mexican specialties are also available, including stellar pupusas (thick tortilla-like discs stuffed with pork, beans, and/or cheese), generous tortas, tacos, house-made soups (beef), and empanadas. The dining room is cozy — decorated with dozens of small flags representing Central America — and typically filled with families and workers from the neighborhood. And if you order any of your items to go, you get plenty in the way of extras: our recent orders came with baggies full of fresh cabbage slaw for pupusas, pickled red onions for tacos, and three types of salsas.
1304 Central, saborcentroamericanoks.com
Delicias Pastries
This little cake and pastry shop at the corner of 18th and Central Avenue is owned by Jesús Magaña, and his son, Jesús Magaña, Jr. The two have been in business for several years, originally selling their cakes to hotels and corporate clients. But they’ve been at this location, which also serves the public, for about five. The flavors are straightforward classics, brilliantly executed: fruit tarts glisten with candied kiwi, plums, and strawberry; incredibly moist chocolate cake is layered with chocolate mousse and covered in slick ganache; and coffee-soaked white and chocolate cakes are layered with mocha mousse. Buy by the slice or pick up an entire sheet cake.
1704 Central, deliciaspastries.com
El Camaroncito
There are actually two Marisqueria (seafood) restaurants directly across the street from each other at the intersection of North Baltimore Street and Central Avenue: Mariscos el Pirata to the south, and El Camaroncito to the north. Both are worth trying, but we give the slight edge to El Camaroncito (“the Little Shrimp”) for its huge menu and friendly service. Naturally, El Camaroncito specializes in seafood: whole fried snapper, oysters, and octopus are available “natural” or dressed. You can order shrimp served a dozen different ways, our favorite being the Camarones a la Diabla: whole, unpeeled, head-on shrimp, cooked in a super spicy, tangy, and thick chile de arbol sauce that will have you licking your fingers. The restaurant also serves guilotas (quail), served in that same insanely good diabla sauce or fried with rice and beans.
1022 Central, on Facebook
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