KC restaurant, wine bar & butcher shop opens in former home of iconic cafe
After two years of quiet, the lights are back at the former Cafe Europa spot.
This time, instead of coffee and lemon cake, the space is offering fresh-cut beef and wine.
New York Butcher Shoppe softly opened Friday at the 4928 Main St. spot in the South Plaza neighborhood. On one half, a grab-and-go market sells wine, pasta, frozen entrees and a variety of beef cuts.
On the other, a sit-down restaurant and wine bar.
For now, just the market side is open. The restaurant and wine bar are coming Tuesday.
Franchise owner Scott Sovereign and his team with Bellator Holdings brought the South Carolina chain to the Kansas City area.
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Partnering with the brand was an easy choice, Sovereign said, especially after watching the company continue to grow post-COVID.
“The resilience there in hard times is big for us,” Sovereign said. “But really just the ability to offer high-quality food at a reasonable price.”
The restaurant offers the NYB Smash Burger (charred red onion, smoked bacon, cherry pepper relish, pickle, shredded lettuce, gruyere, cheddar and a house sauce on a potato bun) for $17 and a steak trio (three rotating, chef-selected cuts) for $24 and grilled salmon for $28.
Other menu options include a meatball sub ($15), smoked brisket and grilled cheese sandwich ($17), and a super greens bowl ($14).
Sovereign is based in Kansas City and plans more in the area. His next target is the Corinth Square shopping center at 83rd Street and Mission Road, though he said developers haven’t given him a specific address. He expects the Prairie Village location will open by the end of October.
On the grab-and-go side, the butcher shoppe sells cookies, chips, jam, sauce, pasta and other dry goods. It carries some Kansas City brands — spot the Arthur Bryant’s bottles on the shelves.
A wine-by-the-bottle selection is also available. Several entrees and sides are made in-house, then frozen: fries, meatloaf, beef stroganoff, roasted veggies and more.
Standing between the two sides is the butcher area. Chefs chop and mince food in an open kitchen.
“We’re really focusing on third-party certification of the meat to ensure that certain standards will be taken, all the way from birth to cow,” Sovereign said.
Take certified Angus Beef, for example. “We know that cow’s been treated, we know it’s been fed, we know its life cycle.”
The shop offers Booth Creek Wagyu products, sourced from a farm out of Manhattan, Kansas.
New York Butcher Shoppe plans to start with a reduced menu, then add more items on as the staff feels comfortable.
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The restaurant was founded in 1999 after Billy D’Elia and his family relocated to South Carolina from Brooklyn and discovered a limited number of quality butcher shops in the area.
Today, the restaurant has 37 locations in 10 states, including Texas, Ohio, Alabama and Tennessee.
Before the restaurant moved in, Cafe Europa had a brief life there. It began in 2001 in the Crestwood Shops as Europa! Cafe.
The cafe’s most recent owner, Ben Cascio, purchased the cafe in 2016 and relocated it to the South Plaza spot in 2022. Before that, the old brick building with garage bay doors was a firehouse.
In late 2023, a few months after Cafe Europa closed, Cascio opened a scaled-back version of the concept in Leawood called The Lemon Cake Bakery. The spot at 10683 Mission Road in Leawood serves several of Cafe Europa’s baked goods, including its signature lemon cake.