This KC area corner bar got new owners but kept the vibes — and the delicious $7 Reuben

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The old-school, pub-style wooden bar you see when you step into Breit’s Stein and Deli is your first clue that you’ve found a slice of Kansas City that remains largely untouched by trends and time.

While displays of photos, dollar bills and knickknacks above bottles of bourbon are pretty typical in neighborhood dives, the vibe of the corner bar at 412 N. Fifth St. in Kansas City, Kansas, is its own thing. I’d call it more of a “half dive”: unfussy and quickly familiar but without the dim lighting and writing on bathroom stalls. It’s the kind of place where everyone feels like a regular, and where you could bring your whole family.

I had heard of the Strawberry Hill bar with the $7 Reuben shortly after I moved to the area in 2021, but it took until I moved to KCK this past fall to finally go.

“You walk in and feel like you know everybody the first time you’re there,” said John McClelland, who himself had been a regular before he became one of the bar’s new co-owners a few months ago.

That was true for me — the first time I took a seat at the bar on a Tuesday night, the bartender recognized my boyfriend and me from the Mockingbird, a nearby half-dive bar I loved that closed last year.

I noticed a green hat hanging on the wall that reminded me of the Irish driving cap my grandpa used to wear, and a bumper sticker above the bar that said, “Will work for slivovitz,” a plum brandy that’s a nod to the neighborhood’s Eastern European roots. We used to drink it in the basement of my grandma’s Serbian Orthodox church. The place felt like a crossover of both sides of my family.

I ordered my beer, Reuben and side of coleslaw. My boyfriend got the same. The sandwich is cheekily labeled the second best selling item on the menu, behind Guinness.

The Reuben was exactly what I had hoped for. Toasted rye, with thinly sliced, perfectly salty corned beef that melts in your mouth. The kraut is sour, the Thousand Island is sweet, and the Swiss seals the deal. The coleslaw is vinegar-based, which I prefer, instead of creamy.

“We know how to keep it simple,” McClelland said. “There’s nothing exotic about the Reuben at Breit’s. It’s really good ingredients, made the right way.”

Two Reubens, two coleslaws, four beers and two shots of slivo cost us about $30.

My favorite time to go to Breit’s is on a laid-back weeknight, but the lunch rush is when the kitchen hits its stride.

Tables are full of friends and families. The bar is packed with workers swinging through on their hour off the clock. And on a recent sunny February afternoon, even the patio tables out back were full.

That day, I assumed that my bar neighbors would also be craving a Reuben, but the guy next to me was eating a turkey sandwich, and the guy on the other side had a bowl of chili. His Notre Dame polo matched the decorations on the wall, and the familiarity everyone seemed to have with him made it seem like he could own the place.

It turned out that he did — or that he used to.

Bob Breitenstein sold the bar to McClelland and his brother-in-law Johnathan Griffiths in December after more than 20 years. That afternoon, he and I talked college hoops, and I got the sense that was generally how he still spent a lot of afternoons.

McClelland confirmed that Breitenstein is in there “just about every day” helping out, and the new family at the helm is taking notes. McClelland and Griffiths are running the bar alongside their wives Katrina McClelland and Erin Griffiths.

“It’s a real honor to get to learn from someone who’s done it the way he has,” McClelland said.

Stephenie Stewart, the longtime manager whom McClelland described as the linchpin of the whole place, has luckily stuck around to keep the show running and to maintain the vibe after the ownership change. And so have the regulars, some of whom Stewart said she’s been serving for even longer than the 15 years she’s been at Breit’s.

McClelland promised he’d change “as little as possible” when his family bought the bar. The other night, staff told me that’s been pretty true, except for some newly exposed brick and a transition from the menu on the wall to laminated paper ones scattered across the bar. And “prices went up slightly.”

Emphasis on the slightly. At some point the Reuben went from about $6.35 to $6.95.

“We like the fact that it’s less than seven bucks,” McClelland said. “We want to keep it that way for as long as we can.”

This story was originally published February 21, 2024 at 10:42 AM.

Allison Dikanovic

The Kansas City Star

Allison Dikanovic is The Star’s local government accountability editor. She’s been in Kansas City since 2021, previously leading the service journalism team. She has worked in newsrooms and classrooms in Milwaukee, Oakland and New York. She holds degrees from Marquette University and the Craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism at CUNY.