‘It’s made with love’: A tour of KCK restaurants bringing a little Mexico to the Midwest
Editor’s note: Some interviews for this piece were conducted in Spanish and have been translated into English. Para leer una versión de este artículo en español, haz clic aquí.
Walk down Central Avenue in Kansas City, Kansas, and you will see the Hispanic restaurants lined up right next to each other.
A few blocks north along Minnesota Avenue and it’s the same thing.
I moved to Kansas City a little over nine months ago, having never even visited. My parents left Mexico City and immigrated to the United States when I was just 4 years old. All of my extended family still live in Mexico.
Everywhere I’ve ever lived, I try finding the restaurants and local establishments that remind me of the food from back home. When I got to Kansas City, I discovered Wyandotte County.
Wyandotte County is among the most diverse counties in the country, a mixture of people, languages, cultures — and, of course, food. In a county where 40% of the people are white, 29% are Hispanic and 21% are Black, according to census data. The restaurants are among the features that highlight its diversity.
Since visiting Wyandotte County — Kansas City, Kansas, specifically — that first time, it’s become my little home away from home. In an effort to spotlight the cultures of this corner of Kansas, The Star visited three Hispanic-owned restaurants around the city, speaking to the people there who make the food, restaurants and community the important epicenter of culture I’ve come to love.
I tapped Danny Silva, the president and CEO of the KCK Chamber of Commerce to help identify and tag along to three places: GG’s Barbacoa Cafe, Micheladas Culiacán and El Pollo Rey. Silva has lived in the area for seven years. Originally from Chicago, Silva’s father is from Mexico and his mother is from Guatemala. He grew up in predominantly Hispanic neighborhoods in Chicago and went to school at the University of Missouri-Kansas City.
In his current role, which he’s held for six years, he often ventures out into the community, whether it be for lunch meetings or simply opportunities to introduce people to the food and culture in KCK.
“Food is such an important part of culture,” Silva said. “And so it’s awesome for folks to be able to have the same types of food they would have had, whether it’s in Guatemala or Mexico or Puerto Rico.
“I think it’s always a good connection to our community, to be able to sample foods our moms made, or restaurants that we went to when we were little.”
GG’S Barbacoa
It’s not the smells that hit you first when you walk into GG’s Barbacoa in Kansas City, Kansas – it’s the heat. It’s, in a way, unbearable and comforting.
When I go back to Mexico City and eat at restaurants, walk into tiendas, or spend nights at my abuelitas’ house, I’m reminded how none of the places have air conditioning.
You sit in the heat, no matter how unpleasant, and it feels like home.
The day I visited GG’s with Silva it was 90 degrees. I loved it.
Gabriel Gonzalez opened GG’s Barbacoa in 2019 with his wife, Lourdes Avalos. Gonzalez, 48, greets everyone who steps through the door.
Though born in Tabasco, Mexico, Gonzalez moved to the small town of Agua Dulce, in Veracruz, Mexico, early on. He jokes that it’s almost like he’s from neither place because his Spanish accent is neither Veracruz nor Tabasco.
Gonzalez worked construction with his uncles growing up and hated it. He wanted what the people who owned small taquerias and grocery stores had.
“I liked being a chef,” Gonzalez said. “I even had a goal of being a chef on a cruise ship.”
When he immigrated to KCK in 1999, the urge to work in the food business was stronger than ever. But first he needed to learn how to cook.
His first job was at McDonald’s. From there, he went to Boston Market, then Danny’s Bar and Grill; at each place improving his cooking skills and gaining insight into managing a kitchen.
Around 2014, he applied for a job as a kitchen assistant at Children’s Mercy Park, where Sporting KC plays. Soon he became a cook, then a sous chef, known for his easygoing personality, an ability to learn quickly and, of course, his cooking.
He landed a job as a chef at Arrowhead Stadium in 2015 and began criss crossing between states, sometimes working two shifts in one day.
At Arrowhead is where his boss started calling him GG.
But after a few years he hit a wall. He realized he could not really advance his career much further. He had mentioned to his wife before that he wanted to open a restaurant. She agreed it was the right time.
The two of them found a spot along Minnesota Avenue and went at it alone.
It’s still just the two of them. The menu, a white, laminated poster board situated directly above the counter, is in Spanish and English. The 36 menu items, which take the diner on a journey through breakfast, lunch and dinner – with some stops at desserts and coffee – are displayed in a colorful photo collage.
There’s sunny-side up eggs with a red salsa and platanos con crema (fried plantains with sour cream, a side dish so good my mom always hid them from me whenever she made them). There’s a red pozole, a traditional Mexican soup made with shredded cabbage, meat and hominy, hard white balls of maize. Gonzalez’s wife makes it with chicken and pork bones. And then there’s the quesabirria platter — GG’s most popular dish.
Their menu sticks to their Tabascan roots. Most of the meat is barbacoa — a slow cooked beef marinated in a sauce of guajillo and ancho peppers, tomato, onion, cumin, garlic, bay leaves and whole cloves — that Avalos makes herself.
Around lunch time it’s hard to find a place to sit. The few tables in the center of the restaurant and the plastic stools lining the perimeter are often full, no matter how hot it is.
Spanish is in the air, from the customers to the music oozing out of the speaker system. My parents always stressed the importance of never forgetting Spanish. It’s a fear I have living in an English-dominant city and country, but not here. Not at GG’s.
I ordered the quesabirria tacos; they’re what Gonzalez recommends to new customers. It’s easy to see why. The four quesabirrias are loaded with the smoky, melt-in-your-mouth barbacoa and mozzarella cheese on corn tortillas, then topped with cilantro and chopped onions. All that and it comes with a soup of beef, cilantro and onions.
Gonzalez has big plans for the future of his restaurant. He hopes to expand and add a patio to the side. And when his kids are older, he wants to stay open into the evenings. Right now GG’s closes at 5 p.m. so he can spend the evening with his son and daughter.
Really, he just hopes more people discover it and come eat.
“It’s made with love,” Gonzalez said. “It’s a small piece of Tabasco here in Kansas.”
Micheladas Culiacán
Now this is different.
When you stroll into Micheladas Culiacán on Central Avenue you immediately see what you’re likely bound to order: the michelada – an amber red or orange drink popular throughout all of Mexico, but especially common on the beaches. It’s like a beer cocktail, with tomato juice, salt and lemon.
By the way, they’re great on a hot day.
At Micheladas Culiacán, which opened in 2017, they’re made with owner Jenny Barraza’s unique style. She loads them with shrimp, curling around the rim of the glass like little fingers, and beef jerky.
The drink could almost substitute a meal — you’re full, if you can even finish it.
“It’s a recipe from our house,” Barraza said. “Ours, for example, has a lot of lime.”
It took Barraza four days of experimentation, measuring each ingredient carefully, like a chemistry experiment.
She declined to give up the goods, keeping the detailed list of ingredients private.
Barraza opened this restaurant in hopes of bringing a Culiacán element and style to Kansas City, Kansas. Culiacán is a city in northwest Mexico, in the state of Sinaloa, roughly 30 minutes from the Pacific Ocean.
“You come here and experience tastes that are very different,” said Edgar Galicia, executive director of the Central Avenue Betterment Association.
Micheladas Culiacán isn’t really a restaurant or a bar. It’s kind of both, kind of neither. It sits alone amid KCK’s Hispanic establishments in what it brings to the table.
Barraza wanted a restaurant that served botanas, or snacks. There’s jicama, a popular Mexican root vegetable that is delicious with salt, lime and a little bit of chili powder. There’s also pepino — cucumber — typically seasoned with salt and lemon but really can be topped with any seasonings of your choosing.
There’s also shrimp and carne seca — beef jerky — but really thin, not like the typical jerky you find at a grocery store.
Like GG’s Barbacoa, Spanish music tears through the air, loud enough that it can be difficult to hear the person sitting next to you.
Sweat trickled down my face – body temperature at uncomfortable levels – as I ordered my first michelada. I had never had a michelada before.
The taste is hard to describe. You know it’s filled with beer and lemon, but it doesn’t taste too much like beer – that can be a trap. Drink too much, too fast and you might get a little dizzy spell (A note to my editors: I did not do this).
Barraza was born in Culiacán but moved to Los Angeles when she was a teenager. When she came to KCK in 1997, she immediately realized how few Hispanic-centered restaurants there were. She was depressed.
“It was sad,” Barraza said. “I even wanted to go back (to California).”
I get it. When I moved from Mexico City to Austin, I was 4 years old and even if I don’t remember much, I do remember missing the foods I had grown up eating.
Barraza has been surprised by how much the business has grown in the almost five years Micheladas Culiacán has been open. Folks have even visited from California and said it’s the best michelada they’ve had, she said.
Barraza understands the importance of having these kinds of restaurants in her city. Even if they may not be the most popular – yet.
“A lot of people like Hispanic food, not just Mexican food, whether it’s from Central America or other (areas). So it’s important so people can start learning our culture,” Barraza said. “But also for the (Hispanic) people who live here who yearn for the food.”
El Pollo Rey
Parking in front of El Pollo Rey in south Kansas City, Kansas, it’s easy to think, “Is this a barn?” The fire truck red building is shaped like a barn with its black-tiled roof, stacks of chopped wood piled outside.
Then you smell the chicken: amazing.
El Pollo Rey is unlike either of the two restaurants we stopped at along this journey. For one, it’s not really a hole in the wall or a hidden gem. It sticks out when you drive past it.
As soon as I walked in, the first thing I clocked were the chickens searing on the stove right in front of me.
The chickens at El Pollo Rey are always fresh. And looking at the stove you just know one of those is soon going to be in your stomach, leaving you so full you might not be able to get up.
The most popular order here is the half chicken, served with red rice, beans and freshly made tortillas. It was just before noon when Silva and I dropped in, and the restaurant had been open probably no more than 30 minutes. You wouldn’t know from how packed it was. Almost every table was filled with diners.
El Pollo Rey has already broken through.
The chicken joint was started by father and son duo Jose and Francisco Quintana from Chihuahua, a northern state in Mexico. When Silva and I started eating, he mentioned the taste of the chicken reminded him of chicken he once had in Matehuala, a city in Mexico in the state of San Luis Potosi — a state about 630 miles south.
I’ve been to Matehuala several times — it’s where my family and I would stop over to sleep on the drive from Austin to Mexico City. Unfortunately, I had never had chicken there.
I wish I had.
Jose and Francisco started selling chickens on street corners around KCK out of a little trailer. It was just a way to start making money, said Edna Quintana, Francisco’s niece. Jose is her grandfather.
“It was (Jose’s) dream to have his own business,” said Edna, 31, who worked at El Pollo Rey for 10 years until 2019.
Jose had his own recipe for how to marinate the chicken — a secret recipe I, again, wasn’t privy to know. But Edna said before a chicken is placed on the grill, it’s also seasoned with salt and pepper.
The wood is important, Edna said. It’s what helps give the chicken the flavor.
When she looks back, Edna laughs at how small the first place was. People snaked around the restaurant waiting for a place to sit. Smoke filled the entire restaurant, sometimes so much that firefighters were called, thinking someone had started a fire.
“What attracts people is that you walk in and you see the grill, you see the wood, you see the flames and they are cooking right in front of you,” she said. “A lot of places might cook with charcoal, but that doesn’t give it the same flavor.”
The chicken is soft and tender. And if a chicken is not cooked the same day it is served, then it’s thrown away. The tortillas are purchased fresh each day from San Antonio’s Carniceria y Tortilleria across the street.
Similar to the dozens of times I’ve been to taquerias in Mexico, you can taste how fresh they are. The only difference is in Mexico the tortillas are made right in front of you.
What was striking about El Pollo Rey, after having stopped at GG’s Barbacoa and Micheladas Culiacán, was how diverse, multiracial, and multi-ethnic the mix of customers were.
The two previous places had largely Hispanic crowds, with mostly Spanish speakers. Edna notices the vastly different backgrounds that come to chow. She’s happy the restaurant is like that.
“The restaurant brings a lot of people of various different cultures,” she said. “And it’s important to have a place that brings people of different cultures together.”
