Food website says to skip these sides at BBQ restaurants. Kansas City might disagree
Daily Meal, a food and beverage website, has a new guide for ordering at barbecue joints: “7 Foods You Should Order At A Barbecue Restaurant, And 5 foods You Shouldn’t.”
Do order: Pork ribs, brisket, smoked turkey, burnt ends, baked beans, cornbread and regional specialties (it says Kansas City is known for its sauce and burnt ends).
Don’t order: Macaroni and cheese, salad, vegetables, french fries or dessert.
That list might work fine for other cities. But some Kansas City barbecue restaurants take their sides and desserts as seriously as their meats.
Mac and cheese
Daily Meal says, “mac and cheese is a pretty basic dish without too much personality.”
But Q39 is getting a “huge response” for its new Mac + Q menu. Customers can customize their macaroni and cheese order with onion straws, pulled pork, sausage, brisket, roasted tomatoes and/or pork belly.
Its sides also include such chef-driven choices as apple slaw with green onions, and a white bean cassoulet with chipotle sausage.
Joe’s Kansas City Bar-B-Que is often on national “best” lists for its barbecue. But in 2022 Mashed — an online publication that says it is the “ultimate destination for all things food” — put out “The Best Gas Station Food in Every State.”
While it praised Joe’s for flavorful ribs and rich meaty brisket, it said the “best thing to order is one of their side dishes — macaroni and cheese.” The dish is loaded with white cheddar sauce and smoked provolone cheese with its french fry seasoning dusted on top.
French fries
Joe’s also sells bottles of the fry seasoning — made with salt, brown sugar, garlic, onion, paprika and dehydrated bone broth.
In 2017, the seasoning helped it get the most reader votes in The Kansas City Star’s french fry tournament.
Its onion rings are so popular it bought the local company making them.
Arthur Bryant’s Barbeque continually passes out stacks of meat with a matching side of fries during its lunch and dinner rushes.
But the Daily Meal says, “Barbecue is greasy to begin with: Can your stomach really handle deep-fried, oily sliced potatoes?”
More sides and dessert
In August, Food & Wine named eight restaurants in its feature, “Where to Find the Best Barbecue in Kansas City.”
Along with barbecue meats, it went on to recommend sides and desserts.
▪ Gates Bar-B-Q: “Coleslaw, potato salad and yammer pie.”
▪ LC’s Bar-B-Q: “Save room for sides, like baked beans and potato salad, and tasty desserts like peach cobbler and apple pie.”
▪ Slap’s BBQ: “Baked potato casserole and cheesy corn with pickled jalapenos.”
▪ Fiorella’s Jack Stack Barbecue: “Split a full slab of pork baby back ribs with classic sides like hickory pit beans, cheesy corn bake and creamy coleslaw.”
Jack Stack’s Mom’s Carrot Cake is a bestseller with 63,000 orders in 2022. The restaurant has used a recipe by a former employee’s mother for two decades.
“If you are super ambitious it serves one, if you want a couple of bites it serves four,” said Cameron Baraban, spokesman for Jack Stack.
Its carrot cake cupcake is a popular carryout order. The company sold more than 300,000 of them in 2022.
An earlier version of this story gave incorrect information on the creator of Jack Stack’s Mom’s Carrot Cake. The error was due to incorrect information from a source.
This story was originally published January 18, 2023 at 2:10 PM.