Nashville Eats & Other Weekend Possibilities
Get yourself a half-pound of fried catfish (or more) at Lufti's if you're feeling like a taste of Nashville this weekend. (Jonathan Bender | Flatland)
Published January 4th, 2018 at 6:00 AM
If you don’t want to root for the Tennessee Titans, the first round opponent of the Kansas City Chiefs, that’s completely understandable. But that doesn’t mean you have to shun the foods of Nashville. We’ve got plenty of the top Nashville hits right here in KC.
You can check out a meat and three concept with EJ’s Urban Eatery (1414 W. Ninth St.) in the West Bottoms, shrimp and cheddar grits at Rye on the Plaza (4646 JC Nichols Parkway), fried catfish at Lufti’s (3037 Main St.) or fried ribs at King’s Table Soul Food (5932 Prospect Ave.).
You can get a stack of pulled pork on a bun in Nashville, but here we’ll just go ahead and give you the whole pig between two slices of bread. Woodyard Bar-B-Que (3001 Merriam Lane, Kansas City, Kansas) has the Triple P: a heap of pulled pork, ham and smoked bacon topped with melted provolone. Carnivores can also take note of hot chicken, which has become a Tennessee export. EJ’s runs a hot chicken fried special now and again, but we also have an outpost of Gus’s World Famous Fried Chicken (2816 W. 47th Ave., Kansas City, Kansas).
First, there was the Wiener Wagon, a mobile cart slinging hand-stuffed sausages at the downtown Overland Park Farmers Market. You can now add the Wiener Kitchen into the mix. The new breakfast and lunch spot from David Derr and Jessica Rush is right around the corner from the farmers’ market at 9645 W. 87th St. in Overland Park, Kansas.
If you’re feeling like breakfast, opt for the Bacon Sausage, which comes smothered in sausage gravy and can be topped with a fried egg or hot sauce. For lunch, dive into a chili cheese dog (covered in chorizo black bean chili) or vegetarians can find love with the spice-roasted carrot (a blackened organic carrot with pickled onion and toasted pumpkin seeds). The sausages are served on buns from Sasha’s Bakery.
You can also grab sausages to go. Wiener Kitchen is open from 7 a.m. to 2 p.m. Wednesday through Friday and 8 a.m. to 2 p.m. Saturday.
Tom’s Town Distillery (1701 Main St.) has four tours on Saturday (2:30, 4:30, 6:30, 8:30 p.m.). Learn about the spirits made by Tom’s Town during the hour-long tour ($10) and then check out its new winter menu, which launched at the end of December, in the tasting room. Consider toasting with the Pinky Blitz (vodka, blood orange, ginger shrub and ginger beer).
It’s never too early to prepare for a Chiefs’ playoff game. Consider an alternate take (read: indoor) on tailgating with the Founders CBS Pancake Breakfast at Grinders Stonewall (10240 Pflumm Road, Lenexa, Kansas). It’s pancakes paired with the big breakfast stout that’s aged in bourbon barrels where maple syrup has also been aged. Breakfast kicks off at 11 a.m., and it’s a while-supplies-last kind of thing.
Casa Latina (11200 Johnson Drive, Shawnee, Kansas) celebrates its first anniversary beginning at noon Saturday. They offer a host of Latin American dishes — get yourself a plate of chicharrones (fried pork skins), arroz con pollo (chicken with rice), fried plantains or yuca, empanadas or ceviche.
The only way to combat the cold is perhaps to fill yourself with so much crab that you simply no longer care about mundane everyday things such as weather. Jax Fish House & Oyster Bar (4814 Roanoke Parkway) has its Bottomless Crab Brunch from 10:30 a.m. to 2 p.m. on Sundays. Munch on Dungeness and snow crab served with butter and lemon. There’s also an option for bottomless mimosas or bloody marys.
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