We’re fast becoming a coffee paradise: Best of KC 2019
Kaley Gann of Messenger Coffee // Photo by Kelcie McKenney
Our annual Best of Kansas City 2019 issue is out now. Go grab a copy. Alternatively, you can browse the results of the readers’ poll here. The issue also includes a list, compiled and written by The Pitch’s editorial staff, shouting out some of our current favorite things about KC. We’ll be publishing these items online throughout the month of October.
♥
Barbecue, jazz, fountains—yeah, yeah, yeah. We’re proud of ‘em. How about that coffee, though? We ain’t Portland or Seattle or New York, sure, but local coffee freaks know that KC’s scene has been brewing up something special for years. The spaces are increasingly dazzling: Messenger’s massive and highly Instagrammable three-story HQ in the Crossroads, Blip’s bad-ass West Bottoms hideaway, the dreamily elegant Monarch Coffee in midtown. But so is the coffee—and, of course, the locals making it. This year, the U.S. Coffee Championships—a pretty big deal in the coffee world—imported some of the country’s top baristas to KC for a week. Three of them didn’t have to book a flight; you’ve possibly ordered an Americano from Kaley Gann or Joel Bigelow at Messenger, or Gisel Alvarez at Monarch. In the end, Gann was crowned the national champion for her coffee brewing skills in the competition’s Brewer’s Cup. “I didn’t feel like I won, I felt like we won,” Gann told us afterward—the “we” being Kansas City. She was being modest. But we love the sentiment.
