Category: Kansas

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Danny Edwards Blvd. BBQ – Kansas City, Missouri

Gil Garduno

Kansas City is known as the “city of fountains.”  It’s also known as the “world’s barbecue capital.” If locals had their way, ever the twain would meet and the city’s fountains would be burbling not with water, but with barbecue sauce.  Barbecue sauce runs through the veins of local barbecue aficionados.  It’s an integral part of the city’s heritage.  More than at the other regions–the Carolinas, Texas and Memphis–in which barbecue is a religion, Kansas City pit masters know that sauce is the crowning touch to their low-and-slow handiwork. In combination with dry rub seasonings, the sauce gives smoked meats their personality.  It’s what you taste most along with the smoky flavor.  One of the very best barbecue sauces my…

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STROUD’S RESTAURANT & BAR – Fairway, Kansas

Gil Garduno

Kansas City is often referred to as the “world’s barbecue capital.”  With more than 100 barbecue restaurants, its reputation for outstanding barbecue is known far and wide.  It’s not as commonly known that Kansas City can also strut its stuff about its fried chicken.  In fact, Travel Channel television host Adam Richman has joked that KC actually stands for “killer chicken.” The killer chicken tradition started with Stroud’s Restaurant which not surprisingly, began in 1933 as a barbecue shack in Kansas City.  On Independence Day a few years later, founder Helen Stroud added skillet fried chicken.  It sold out immediately and has been on the menu ever since.  Ironically, barbecue is no longer on the menu. Fittingly both of my…

BarbecueKansasUnited States

Oklahoma Joe’s Barbecue – Kansas City, Kansas

Gil Garduno

You might expect that a magazine renowned for its staunch advocacy of healthy living and fitness would celebrate only healthful dining and that its food-related content would be penned only by paragons of physical fitness and health. Perhaps because it may want a broader, younger readership demographic, Men’s Health Magazine asked popular but vice-ridden sybarite Anthony Bourdain to author an article entitled “13 Places to Eat Before You Die.” Bourdain, whose seedy past includes heavy drinking, drug use, chain smoking and an addiction to pork wrote a thought-provoking “bucket list” which included restaurants and food–outstanding though they might be–which might actually accelerate your demise. What a way to go! Interspersed within Bourdain’s lucky thirteen restaurants, some of which are among…