With regards to finding the best burger in Kansas City, individuals have compelling conclusions. There are a couple of regulars that are quite often referenced in any conversation of KC’s best burgers, names you most likely know well: Town Topic, Westport Flea Market, Kitty’s Cafe.
One thing they all share practically speaking? There nothing surprising about them. These incredible burgers have all been around for quite a long time.
We are a cowtown, all things considered. So I went to attempt them — every one of them.
I wasn’t only searching for the best burger in the city. I needed my burger with a side of sentimentality. I needed just the burgers that had endured over the extreme long haul that people actually discussed, many years on.
For this task, I would just search out burgers from foundations that had been constantly open for quite some time or more. Town Topic and Winstead’s were in while The Savoy and The Golden Ox were out in light of the fact that they’d shut and returned with new recipes. Any time I experienced a few choices, I requested a cheeseburger or the house forte, whichever was more well known. Here are the five best burgers in Kansas City that have a set of experiences to them — in addition to ten others that are damn great.
Hayes Hamburgers and Chili (1955)
The people at Hayes Hamburgers and Chili know how to leave well enough alone. The recipe for their stew has been in proprietor Jim Hayes’ family beginning around 1906, and it’s similar equation his 24-hour burger joint has been utilizing since it opened in 1955. Hayes, who actually possesses the coffee shop yet has resigned from everyday tasks, has left long-lasting worker Aaron Sprink in control. Sprink has been at Hayes for a long time and has overseen it for the last 15. Neither he nor his devoted group are free lipped: Not one of them will let you know what’s in the stew aside from that it has meat. They won’t let you know where the hamburger comes from, either — just that it is “ground new by one of our long-term clients and conveyed seven days per week.”
The bean stew is significant. It procures Hayes a spot in our main five, since, obviously, the most effective way to appreciate one of the spot’s burgers is with a scoop of stew in lieu of garnishes and fixings. It’s a rich hickory tone, skillfully flavored — no beans or interesting stuff. It’s the ideal supplement to the unimposing Hayes burger patty, which you can watch being crushed onto the level top barbecue on top of a flimsy layer of onions that caramelize and breaker to the meat, making a wanton covering. At the point when this stew cheeseburger shows up before you, having voyaged under three feet from the kitchen to your seat, it is steaming hot and swarm riding a bed of fragrant onions while a weighty heap of bean stew overflows onto the plate. The yellow American cheddar has just barely dissolved, and the delicate bun marvelously holds everything set up as you eat up this magnum opus in a couple of short chomps. 2502 N.E. Vivion Road, KCMO. 816-453-5575.
Jess and Jim’s Steakhouse (1938)
In the event that you know Jess and Jim’s Steakhouse, you probably don’t consider it a burger objective. In any case, you ought to.
Jess and Jim’s opened in 1938. Albeit the eponymous originators, Jess Kincaid and Jim Wright, are a distant memory, their inheritance progresses forward with thanks to R.C. Van Noy, Wright’s cousin who assumed control over the business in the last part of the ’70s. In 1990, Mike and David Van Noy, R.C’s. children, succeeded their dad. They’re still in control today.
The steaks are the primary selling point at Jess and Jim’s. They come from Sterling Silver Meats in Wichita, and they are hand-cut day to day. The decorations are utilized for Jess and Jim’s steakburgers: huge, plate-sized monsters that require two hands and an unfilled stomach. The patty is goodness so-daintily prepared. The point is for you to partake in the serious huskiness of your request, ready as per your liked temperature and finished off with, if it’s all the same to you, barbecued mushrooms and barbecued red onions. It’s served on a buttered, toasted brioche bun with the essential lettuce, tomato and pickles as an afterthought. I got an exceptionally unique sort of satisfaction out of requesting a $12 burger made with the additional pieces of my next-table neighbor’s $30 sirloin. You will, as well. 517 E. 135th St., KCMO. 816-941-9499
Westport Flea Market (1951)
This was one of the main burgers I had when I moved to Kansas City quite a while back. I thought it was respectable: large and succulent, and since the fixings and garnishes are DIY through a dressing bar by the request get window, there was nobody to pass judgment on the over the top measure of pickles and ketchup I enjoyed. In any case, I didn’t actually get the publicity behind it, and I reset my mind.
It was only after this hamburger long distance race that I rediscovered the greatness of the Westport Flea burger. It was day three, I was at that point 11 burgers in, I actually figured out how to eat a whole 50% of this powerful magnificence. Such was its power. Perhaps it’s the hamburger. It’s from McGonigle’s Market, one of Kansas City’s longest-standing butcher shops, established in 1951, that very year Westport Flea started out. The Flea Market Burger is a 10-ounce patty of ground toss (for those with additional moderate hungers, the Mini Market Burger is a 5-and-a-half-ounce patty), and it is definitively burned. The Flea Market Burger is all animal power meat each and every time.
Westport Flea is still money just yet especially a plunge. What’s more, indeed, it actually serves one of Kansas City’s best burgers. 817 Westport Road, KCMO. 816-931-1986.
Town hall Exchange (1899)
I found the Court House Exchange thanks to jury obligation. As I cruised all over Independence Square on a mid-day break, my eye got the enormous white block-letter print on a window: “Serving fine burgers and lager beginning around 1899.”
Burgers were designed when the new century rolled over, and on the off chance that the Court House Exchange’s laid out date is valid, it probably been perhaps the earliest joint in the country to serve them. It’s certainly feasible, using any and all means: Independence prospered as a general store town and leaping off point on the Oregon, Santa Fe and California trails in the principal half of the nineteenth 100 years.
I got the mark Court House Exchange burger. A thick, hand-beat patty made with hamburger from Independence’s own L&C Meat Inc., open starting around 1948, is heaped with two cuts of bacon, cheddar, lettuce and a ready tomato. Rather than ketchup and mustard, Court House Exchange gives its namesake burger a liberal area of sweet and zesty grill sauce. It was an unexpected contort I didn’t realize I really wanted — another sauce I hunger for with a burger now. In any case, there’s no salt or preparing on the patties at the Court House Exchange. “You can’t spruce up the hamburger,” the barkeep told me. She was correct. The Court House Exchange burger enjoyed safety and security. 113 W. Lexington Ave., Independence. 816-252-0344
Kitty’s Café (1951)
Everybody discusses the pork tenderloin sandwich at Kitty’s Café, an ash block shack at 31st Street and Troost Avenue. It’s amazing, obviously, and unbelievable in Kansas City to the extent that pork tenderloin sandwiches go. Yet, I must tell you: If you need a valid as-damnation coffee shop burger, you can’t show improvement over the one at Kitty’s. The slim patty is crushed on the barbecue sufficiently lengthy to get a fresh singe around the edges before it’s finished off with melty American cheddar and got into a soft bun. Request it with everything — crude onions, lettuce, tomatoes, pickles, ketchup and mustard. This is a blessed mix anyplace you go, however at Kitty’s, the flavors are supernatural. This is the sacred goal of burgers. When you have it, you will contrast all others with it. You will long for it. You will be spooky by it. At the point when you are old and creased and telling your grandkids about whenever you first felt love, this burger is the very thing you will discuss.
Kitty’s burgers aren’t huge in breadth — they’re pretty much palm-sized — so you don’t have to feel excessively regretful assuming you choose to arrange a few patties. The recipe hasn’t changed much since OG proprietors Paul and Kitty Kawakami opened the joint quite a while back, and neither have the costs. (A solitary cheeseburger will hamper you $3.25, a twofold is $5, and a triple is $6.25.) Charley Soulivong bought Kitty’s in 1998, and his greatest development was adding an obscure outside seating region. This is particularly helpful since the money just Kitty’s has recently a modest bunch of barstools inside, and the stand by can get long during top hours
