Letter from the Editor: Varying flavors of love for Kansas City

Photo by Grace Chappell

Earlier this month, we published The Pitch’s annual Best of Kansas City issue. You can take a peek at the results of the readers’ poll here. The issue also included a list, compiled and written by our editorial staff, of some local people, places, and things that we think make 2026 KC life feel like a winner. We’ll be publishing these online throughout June and July.

Kansas City loves Kansas City. To a point.

We proudly wear the KC shirts and put the stickers on our water bottles, but at least once a month, I hear someone say they’re “nervous” to drive downtown from the suburbs, or that they won’t be visiting a restaurant I recommend simply because it’s on Troost. Then there are the people claiming they’ll disown the top sports team(s) if they dare to cross state lines. (My eyeroll is towards the border showdown mindset, never at the concerns over taxpayer-funded stadiums for multi-billion-dollar businesses.) 

We love KC in a sibling way—full of snark and idiosyncrasies, fighting in town halls and comment sections over issues that do and do not matter, but we will ruthlessly defend it against other cities.

However, a new facet of KC love has been revealed in our approach to the 2026 FIFA World Cup. 

In many ways, we’ve turned our focus outwards, at least in the most unifying element outside of the sport itself: food and drink.

There’s Scavuzzo’s Foodservice offering restaurants a multi-part newsletter on international fare that visiting fans may expect, plus French Custard and Betty Rae’s debuting new flavors based on our home-base teams’ cultural dishes.

Then there are the spots hiring more Spanish-speaking local content creators and servers, and neighborhood bars ordering more imports rather than defaulting to domestics alone: Kansas City has invested in welcoming global nods, rather than only doubling down on made-in-KC favorites.

The well-earned KC clichés of burnt ends and beer remain, and many visitors, likely most, will seek them out. 

But I have to think that if our overall first impression for visitors is a warm welcome—by showing some attention to detail in cultural diversity—the quintessentially KC elements will be that much better received. It’s a smart strategy of making something comfortable by blending the new with the familiar.

I hope to see some of these inclusive strategies remain long after futbol summer ends. Adding menus in multiple languages (as many have) isn’t free for restaurants to implement, but it’s one way to make any business a little more accessible. It’s almost as if we could be more culturally sensitive and accommodating to those already living in Kansas City… what a concept. 

Our team at The Pitch is unified by our connection to journalism but diverse in aspects such as our neighborhoods, backgrounds, ideas of fun, age, skin color, taste, and more. 

In the following pages, labeled “Adventure Guide,” we share our own selections of Kansas City musts: Local rites of passage, whimsical side quests, and niche experiences. Nothing was assigned or based on any quotas; we gave the team free rein to share their real-life highlights. These are spaces where we feel safe or excited or enlightened, and trust that you will too. (We’re publishing the stories online individually throughout June and July, so keep an eye out for daily updates!)

It’s our contribution to the myriad KC propaganda flowing out of the Midwest right now, but we filtered our recs through the lens of our independent magazine’s origins—a few people cobbling together a gritty, honest, street-level pile of cool things to do, and trusting that it would reach the correct audience. 

The “correct” audience is anyone who won’t kill the vibe. 

People who aren’t afraid to try something new and aren’t too cool to try something popular. 

So if you’re a fan of Japanese cuisine or Balkan pop, who likes birding or imaginative theater, and who’s open to taking a pedicab home after a night of mystery beers, these pages are for you. 

Thanks for checking out our version of loving Kansas City.