KC restaurant known for birria fusion dishes opens in the West Bottoms
Large chunks of slow-cooked beef soaked in a rich consomé come piled high in not tacos, but pressed between two tortillas, in ramen, inside eggrolls and in deep-fried balls covered in Flamin’ Hot Cheetos dust at a new Mexican restaurant in the West Bottoms.
Nunez Foods Eatery opened its second location at 1623 Genessee St. last Sunday. The West Bottoms location is a bit of a departure from the first location in Kansas City, Kansas, in that this eatery is a full sit-down operation as opposed to the original spot’s takeout-only service. The menu also has additions that go beyond Nunez’ sought-after birria dishes.
Like much of owner Brenda Nunez’s career in the restaurant business, she decided to open a location on the Missouri side of KC because people asked her. She started her business back in 2020 because enough people requested the birria dishes they saw her posting online.
Now Kansas City residents can get Nunez’s popular birria ramen ($10.99) and birria “pizza” ($17.99 to $27.99) closer to home. It’s those playful interpretations of how birria is traditionally used that helped bring Nunez Foods to local prominence in the first place.
The story goes that she went to California on vacation and found restaurants doing birria this way. She knew she couldn’t find birria ramen back home in Kansas City, so she started making it for her family.
Enough people in her life found out about what she was concocting in her kitchen that they began asking her to make them some. Nunez thought: Why not turn this into a business?
Now she goes through 400 packs a week of ramen, and Nunez has perfected the art of creating a birria pizza — basically, quesadillas formed like a pizza that are super stuffed with birria meat, cheese and topped with cilantro and chopped onions — that doesn’t fall apart, thanks to the tortilla and how it crisps. But it’s really the birria that’s the star of the restaurant.
“(The birria) is our most sellable food,” Nunez said. “We always make sure it cooks slowly, that it’s fresh. We cook a pot a day that’s always rotating.”
Birria still sells, of course, but Nunez expanded the menu to offer more sit-down meals, like fajitas ($18.99), camarones a la diabla (shrimp cooked in a spicy red sauce, $18.99) and brunch dishes like Mexican chorizo with eggs ($12.99).
She’s waiting to get the business’s liquor license so she can serve cocktails, like a dragon fruit margarita or piña colada.
For now, there are multiple non-alcoholic options available: Jarritos in various flavors, soft drinks, Mexican Coca-Cola and rotating flavors of aguas frescas. Beverage prices run from $2.99 to $5.99.
The space offers about 50 seats in a flamingo pink single dining room. Much like the first location and the Nunez food trucks, the second restaurant features lots of pink and black. In fact, there are plenty of pink shades throughout the room, from the Nunez taco logo and menu text to the flowers in little glass vases on each table. There’s even a pink neon sign that reads “Dial for tacos” next to a pink mounted rotary phone.
Nunez would like to set the record straight: Though it might appear so, pink is not her favorite color — that’d be black, which colors the window trims, seating and the exterior. But in the context of opening her business, the bright bubblegum color means something to her.
She once read a book on flamingos, the famously pink birds that can actually temporarily lose their bright color when they first become mothers and care for their chicks. Once a single mother, Nunez resonated with that fact.
“I was a single mom (when I started this), and selling this food helped me bring in extra income,” Nunez said.
But just like a flamingo, she gained her color back as she watched her kids — and her own entrepreneurial spirit — grow.
The Nunez Foods business is also a family affair. Her youngest was seen running around on a Wednesday afternoon, while her oldest daughter served customers tacos and aguas frescas. Usually, Nunez said, at least one child is in the restaurant.
Once the bar program is in place, Nunez hopes to activate the space with community events, partnering with neighboring businesses like Pole Worx Fitness or becoming a spot for boozy brunches.
Nunez Foods Eatery in the West Bottoms is now open from 9 a.m. to 11 p.m. Sunday through Thursday and 9 a.m. to midnight Friday and Saturday. It is closed on Mondays.
