Kansas City’s earned plenty of national attention this year, thanks in part to the Kansas City Chiefs clinching yet another Super Bowl victory. But the city’s more than just a weekend home for Taylor Swift. Over the past few years, Kansas City has entered a golden age of investment in public infrastructure, with a gleaming new airport, expanded streetcar line, and a new dining and entertainment destination opening this summer on the Rock Island Railroad Bridge over the Kansas River.

All that national attention and new development have underscored what locals have known for years: Kansas City is an underappreciated tourist destination. With plenty of nonstop flights from Houston, the City of Fountains offers an easy getaway for travelers seeking blues and jazz, boundary-pushing cocktails, groundbreaking women’s sports…and, yes, barbecue.

Get saucy

Let’s head this off at the pass: Kansas City barbecue isn’t competing with Texas barbecue any more than Usain Bolt is competing with Secretariat. They’re different styles with different end games, and you’ll have a better time if you can lean into what makes KC unique.

That starts with how the city handles its beef. Brisket here is more likely to be lean, thin-sliced, and piled in tender ribbons on a sauce-slicked bun. This is a feature, not a bug. Kansas City barbecue is a practical, everyday barbecue—the kind that doesn’t require a post-lunch nap.

The brisket’s highest calling is for burnt ends, perhaps the city’s greatest contribution to barbecue. A good burnt end is a textural marvel, combining crunchy, lacquered bark and meltingly tender, fatty brisket in one discrete cube.

Try sliced brisket and burnt ends on one bun by ordering the “beef nooner” at the blessedly old-school Gates Bar-B-Q on Main (request the “original” sauce—heavily spiced but lightly spicy). Gates has been a city institution since 1946, when George W. Gates opened the first location. It’s still run by the Gates family today, with a consistency of service that borders on dinner theater. Don’t flinch when a cashier shouts “HI, MAY I HELP YOU?” the second you walk through the doors—and for god’s sake, grab a tray.

Earn some more street cred with a trip to LC’s Bar-B-Q, a no-frills local favorite. Here, every table offers a front-row seat to the ballet of pitmasters shuffling ribs around a three-tiered pit that’s been lacquered ebony from four decades of smoke and grease.

To round out your education, add a visit to one of the next-gen pitmasters expanding the city’s palate. Homesick Texans will feel at ease at Harp Barbecue, where Tyler Harp and his team churn out thick-sliced, fatty brisket and obscenely indulgent sausage. For more creative cuts, check out Night Goat, a weekly pop-up inside the restaurant Fox and Pearl. Chef and butcher Vaughn Good creates plates like smoked beef cheek quesadillas on supple, Sonoran-style Caramelo tortillas (made in nearby Lawrence, Kansas).

About those tortillas—despite its distance from the border, Kansas City is one of the best places in the country to find Sonoran-style flour tortillas right now. Don’t miss a visit to Yoli Tortilleria, which took home the James Beard Award for Outstanding Bakery last year. Born and raised Sonoran Marissa Gencarelli and her husband, Mark, sell thin, supple Sonoran flour and fresh nixtamalized corn tortillas out of a sunny retail shop in the historically Latino Westside neighborhood of KC. Although the shop doesn’t have seating, it’s a great place for a quick bite. The grab-and-go case is always brimming with housemade breakfast burritos, salsas, conchas, and aguas frescas.

Lunch like a true local with a visit to Kitty’s Cafe, home to the city’s most distinctive pork tenderloin since 1951. The sandwich features a tempura-
breaded, three-ply stack of pork for maximum crunch—an invention of original owners Paul and Kitty Kawakami, a Japanese American couple who settled here after internment. (Know before you go: the cafe is cash-only, and at press time Kitty’s was closed for a remodel.)

Kansas City has a vibrant and modern restaurant scene, but first-time visitors should make room for the classics. There’s a reason Travis Kelce celebrated his birthday at the Golden Ox, a steak house that opened 75 years ago in the city’s historic stockyards district. The Ox is considered the birthplace of the Kansas City strip, and it’s still the best place in town to order one, along with classic steak house apps (onion rings, oysters Rockefeller) and dessert drinks like the Pink Squirrel. A 2018 restoration by new owners after the original spot closed in 2014 put some color in the restaurant’s cheeks without sacrificing its old-school cool.

To keep the party going, head across the street to The Campground, one of the moodiest, most beautiful cocktail bars in KC. You can get a top-notch martini (it comes with potato chips) and order from a small menu of inventive snacks and entrees, from a cucumber and kiwi starter to Alaskan halibut with kale, local shiitakes, and mussel butter.

Cocktail nerds should add a visit to Shawnee, across the Kansas state line west of downtown, to check out Wild Child, which offers a constantly refreshed menu of deranged-but-delicious cocktails such as a kettlecorn julep and a midori sour kakigori. The bar is just as playful with its no-ABV offerings, like the Sound and Fury, one of the best drinks in any category. If you can’t snag a table, head next door to sister bar Drastic Measures, which offers similarly creative cocktails in a cozy atmosphere with an extensive back bar.

Prefer something more casual? Chez Charlie is one of the city’s great dives, with an old-fashioned jukebox, cheap canned beer, and tufted vinyl seating. You’ll know you’re here when you see a generic light-up “COCKTAILS” sign over the door. Do not order a cocktail.

Get rowdy

Despite the Chiefs’ dynastic success, soccer is the sport of choice here. Kansas City, like Houston, will be a host city for the 2026 FIFA World Cup. Nab tickets to a KC Current match to take in the Missouri riverfront inside a brand-new stadium—the country’s first stadium purpose-built for a National Women’s Soccer League team. Game day also offers a surprisingly great way to eat local, with concession outposts of several independent KC restaurants, including Yoli Tortilleria.

Jazz has been part of the city’s cultural fabric since the 1920s, and no visit here would be complete without a stop at one of the city’s many jazz and blues venues. Night owls won’t do better than the Mutual Musicians Foundation, the world’s oldest continuously operating jazz house. The all-night jam sessions start at 1:30am, in keeping with the foundation’s history as a place for musicians to congregate after their gigs. If you can’t keep your eyes open, take in an early show at the Green Lady Lounge, a tourist-friendly jazz club with red walls, stiff drinks, and a $10 cover.

Get cultured

History buffs should book an afternoon at the National World War I Museum. A visit is best paired with an elevator ride (followed by a short but strenuous climb) to the top of the adjoining Liberty Memorial for unparalleled city views. Lovers of classical and modern art alike will be starstruck by the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art. Get up close and personal with Claes Oldenburg and Coosje van Bruggen’s enormous shuttlecocks, which have become the city’s sculptural synecdoche.

Learn more about KC at the Kansas City Museum, housed inside a beautifully restored Beaux-Arts mansion. Budget the most time for the second-floor galleries, which track the city from conception through the 1980s.

Kansas City’s baseball history extends far beyond MLB’s Kansas City Royals. Take a trip to the historic 18th and Vine Jazz District to visit the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum, which offers an engaging blend of history and memorabilia, with a special focus on home team the Kansas City Monarchs, the longest-running franchise in the leagues’ history.

Explore The Rabbit Hole, a children’s literature museum that opened in March. The immersive space brings new and nostalgic books to life in massive multimedia installations. Stroll through a life-size version of the room from Goodnight Moon or hide out in the chapel-like Uptown display, based on the works of author John L. Steptoe.

Get some rest

Lean into the past with a stay at the elegantly restored Hotel Kansas City. The 1922 hotel houses a great restaurant, The Town Company, and high-low nightclub, Nighthawk.

Design lovers will find plenty to admire in the Crossroads Hotel’s updated rooms, with industrial touches and a lively lobby bar full of as many locals as guests most nights (order one of its wood-fired pizzas). For a more boutique feel, try No Vacancy, an eight-room guesthouse in the Crossroads Arts District. Features include hip, Southwest-inflected design and a lounge space that transforms into a pop-up bar, Le Lounge, every Thursday night.