

“Barbecue is all about timing, so I make sure to give myself leeway. “Meat trimming and sausage prep can easily take a whole day,” Easterwood says. The house-made sauce is served in tiny containers to keep meat from being drowned by well-intentioned, overzealous patrons. Easterwood makes everything from scratch, from an escabeche of jalepenos and carrots to a yellow-gold Carolina. Near-perfect barbecued meat is at its core.

That eccentric down-home vibe is just the crackling of the whole operation. The eerie overtones of a 19th-century factory building. It’s low-key, charming and very Kansas City-blending the nostalgia of Sunday cookouts and watching your uncle fix up his Camaro in the garage with Stained-glass cutouts fill the counters where meat is sliced. Wood paneling lines the walls, and iron chandeliers hang where Easterwood cooks. This is no small feat given this particular pit is located in the concession stand of a seasonal haunted house. It’s likely that Zac Brown Band will be playing as Justin Easterwood ushers you in like an old friend whose name he’s temporarily misplaced. Half the customers are sporting Chiefs gear. Stepping into Chef J BBQ in the West Bottoms is like turning up at your buddy’s house for dinner. Chocolate chip cookies that are at once as familiar as a kitchen-counter ceramic jar and as astonishing as it feels to fall in love for the first time. Ambrosial chicken rubbed with an island of spices, cooked with such a focused patience that no drop of precious moisture dares escape the bird.

But his brilliance shines brightest in the menu items you aren’t expecting, the ones you aren’t getting in line for. These are things that many do well and that Harp usually does better. The excellence of Harp’s basics is undisputed: the brisket, the ribs, the sausages. Harp offers it as a seasonal side and folds his sausage into the mix. That includes tater tot casserole, his take on the Midwest classic. It’s made us better and more open-minded about how we can blend other cuisines with what we’re trying to achieve.” “It’s a byproduct of traveling and being around people who care about food. “You can learn a lot from different foods that are not traditional to Kansas City or American barbecue,” Harp says. Another strength-this one less technical, more elusive-is his ability to broaden the scope of One of Harp’s key strengths is balancing bold flavors, and his jerk chicken shows off this skill. When they’re ready, Harp spreads the parts atop fluffy jasmine rice and finishes the plate with a citrusy jerk sauce that boasts a playful nip of habanero. The birds are seasoned just before they are placed on the smoker.
#Bbq drive thru restaurants near me plus#
Harp’s jerk rub is a blend of the usual suspects (clove, nutmeg, cinnamon, anise seed, allspice) plus fresh thyme for brightness and ground long pepper. “It made me want to give that experience to people, something different than the brisket-ribs-sausage plate.” “One of the guys there has a spot called Green Street Smoked Meats, and he had a jerk chicken, and the one he made was the best bite I’ve had all year,” Harp says. To give customers a less expensive option, Harp turned to chicken and found inspiration when he attended Chicago’s Windy City Smokeout this summer. Much of what is on Harp’s menu now is driven by the effects of the pandemic, namely, the record price surge for beef and pork. He’s still got Texas-style brisket-the crown jewel of his menu-ribs that shine like blue ribbon winners, and the cult-favorite blueberry-cheddar sausage. Harp is still cooking in a wood-fired pit parked in the gravel lot out back of Crane Brewing. But Harp keeps setting the pace, getting a little better every time we visit. In the last two years, the city has seen a raft of newcomers who have matched where Harp was two years ago. Two years after we anointed it tops in town, Harp is still the best barbecue experience in Kansas City. If Harp can do that with the drippings, just imagine the brisket itself. I was overcome by a primordial urge to devour what is delicious, closely followed by an instinct to hoard this delicacy for times of scarcity. I tasted all kinds of things: smoke, gooey chocolate, brown sugar, an undeniable Harp Barbecue’s tallow cookies are dark and squat-nothing you’d find on a Pinterest board-but there is a generous dusting of flake salt on top of each one. What pairs well with beef fat? Harp’s mind went to chocolate chips. Tyler Harp was puzzling over what to do with all the drippings left over from Harp Barbecue, his twice-weekly barbecue pop-up in the back room of a Raytown brewery. \u0022,\u0022shared.It started with brisket.
