Sharp’s 63rd Street Grill is getting a face-lift
The breakfast-and-lunch business in Brookside is going to be a lot more competitive next year when St. Louis-based Panera Bread opens a bakery and cafe directly across the street from Sharp’s 63rd Street Grill; Panera will locate its Brookside branch in the former Beauty Express space at 6301 Brookside Plaza.
Marty Junkins, who has owned Sharp’s for the last nine years, is ready for the challenge. “Do I think it’s going to impact the breakfast and lunch business at Sharp’s? Definitely,” says Junkins, who recently renewed his lease on his location at 128 East 63rd Street. “But we have a very loyal clientele.”
A loyal and demanding clientele that balks at nearly every change Junkins and his partner, Todd Tramp, have attempted to make in the restaurant. Last year, two young chefs, Patrice Welcher and Matt Coe, each tried to tweak Sharp’s menu, including removing the venue’s inexplicably popular signature soup, cream of water chestnut. There was backlash from the regulars, and all the menu changes were dropped and the old menu was reinstated. After chef Matt Coe was injured in an accident with a bread mixing machine, Junkins decided not to have an executive chef in the kitchen but veteran cooks working the line.
The biggest change will be unveiled — if all goes according to plan — on November 9. “The Sharp’s dining room,” says interior designer Scott Coker-Padilla, “will look unlike anything else Kansas City has ever seen.”
