Where to Eat, Stay, and Play in Kansas City for Jazz, Barbecue, and the World Cup

This story was originally published by Condé Nast Traveler.

This coming June, travelers from around the world will descend on Kansas City for the 2026 World Cup, with local matches being played at the 76,416-seat Arrowhead Stadium—the same place where American football fans usually cheer on the Kansas City Chiefs. The city is no stranger to international attention and the heavy flow of traffic that comes with it. KC’s historic love for liquor and jazz and its tree-lined City Beautiful boulevards and parks once led Prohibition-era journalists to proclaim it the Paris of the Plains.

The American Jazz Museum is flanked by adjoining club and listening room The Blue Room.

Tourists still come here for jazz, blues, and booze. But Kansas City might be better known these days for the cheers bleeding out of its riverfront soccer stadium—the first in the country purpose-built for a women’s professional soccer team—or the wood smoke coiling up from hundreds of barbecue pits.

While Kansas City serves as a gateway to both the West and South, the city itself is thoroughly Midwestern, and its cowtown roots shine through in its barbecue pits, old-school steakhouses, and cowboy-lite aesthetic. Hospitality is a specialty, and everyone’s welcome here—just try to remember which side of the state line you’re on: While KC straddles the Missouri-Kansas border, the bulk of the metro and its attractions are on the Missouri side. To help you navigate the best of both sides of the state line, here are our recommendations of where to eat, stay, and play during your visit, according to a KC local.

• The best time to visit Kansas City
• Where to eat and drink in Kansas City
• Watching the World Cup in Kansas City
• What to do in Kansas City
• Where to stay in Kansas City

How we choose our recommendations of where to eat, stay, and play in Kansas City

Every recommendation on this list has been given by a Condé Nast Traveler journalist who knows the destination and has visited that activity. When choosing things to do, restaurants, and hotels, our editors consider landmarks and experiences that offer an insider’s view of a destination, keeping authenticity, location, service, and sustainability credentials top of mind.

The best time to visit Kansas City (outside of the World Cup)

The most pleasant time to visit KC is in the fall shoulder season (from September through November), when the sticky summer weather has begun to fade and color starts to creep into the city’s leafy boulevards. It’s also ideal for sports fans, as the local MLB, NFL, MLS, and NWSL teams are all still playing ball. Culture chasers have plenty of options, too, with the Heartland Book Festival, the Plaza Art Fair, and the Kansas City Renaissance Festival in full swing. And many of Kansas’s lush sunflower fields—a popular photo backdrop—are in bloom just a short drive from the metro area.

Saturday pop-up Night Goat Barbecue marries succulent smoked pork belly with Sonoran-style tortillas.

Where to eat and drink in Kansas City

Barbecue is an everyday affair in Kansas City: a workingman’s (and workmanlike) tradition that prioritizes adaptation over aesthetics. Here, brisket is likely to be thin-sliced and lean when it isn’t being chopped into the city’s signature offering: burnt ends. No matter what you order, expect a side of tangy and assertively spiced sauce. For the best view into the city’s barbecue tradition, line up at the charmingly retro Gates Bar-B-Q on Brooklyn Avenue—though you’re more likely to catch a glimpse of 94-year-old patriarch Ollie Gates, who still runs the restaurants, at the Emanuel Cleaver location just off the streetcar line. Char Bar, a sprawling, fratty-looking restaurant in the Westport neighborhood, quietly serves some of the city’s best burnt ends and smoked chicken wings. Once a Saturday-only special pop-up, Night Goat Barbecue, inside Fox & Pearl bistro, served up spoon-tender pork belly with artisanal sides like house-fermented pickles and flights of batch-made hot sauces. While the team has paused pop-ups for now, they plan to launch a full brick-and-mortar location in KC soon. And newcomers like Thai-inflected Buck Tui, in the sprawling suburb of Overland Park, and the single-subject Turkeyleggman, a nationally recognized barbecue joint with little tourist traffic, show how the style continues to evolve.

For a non-barbecue lunch, join the long line of locals outside Kitty’s Cafe and order one of the city’s signature sandwiches: a modestly sized, maximally crunchy tempura-breaded tenderloin. On the Kansas side, blocks of taquerias and trucks form the tourism-bureau-approved KCK Taco Trail. Start with the al pastor at Carniceria y Tortilleria San Antonio and the Sinaloa-style grilled chicken from El Pollo Guasave.

While the Taco Trail is worth exploring, two of the city’s best Mexican eats are actually on the Missouri side. For snacks and souvenirs, prioritize Yoli Tortilleria, the first tortilleria in the country to win a James Beard Award. Yoli’s charming shop in the historically Latino Westside neighborhood offers grab-and-go burritos, a spectrum of jarred salsas, and lithe Sonoran-style flour tortillas to stuff in your suitcases. A few blocks away, Tacos Valentina offers an irresistible take on the “Kansas City taco,” which is served in a fried corn tortilla and dusted with Parmesan.

Black coffee purists will appreciate the roasts at Oddly Correct or Broadway Roasting. Cafe Cà Phê serves up matcha and lattes with Vietnamese flavors, while Café Corazón offers a stacked menu of specialty drinks with Latin flair. For a quick breakfast, grab the “standard” breakfast sandwich at Mildred’s café or swing by Blackhole Bakery for chewy bagels, flaky pastries, and mochi doughnuts with fun flavors, like birthday cake and pink lemonade.

Many of the city’s best restaurants are clustered near the artsy Crossroads neighborhood. For a date night or a light splurge, there’s The Town Company, which showcases Missouri ingredients in a menu making heavy use of a wood-fired hearth. Just a few blocks away, there’s Anjin, a small Midwestern izakaya with a deep sake list and a deceptively casual menu of Japanese sandos and snacks. And Anjin’s sister restaurant, The Antler Room, applies the same exacting techniques to a more formal service setting, with a broader palette of global flavors.

If you’re after historic architecture and maximally vibey interiors, plan at least one meal in the historic West Bottoms neighborhood, once home to the city’s stockyards. The Golden Ox is a faithfully restored historic steakhouse where you can get your fill of locally raised beef, frosty martinis, and creamy dessert drinks.

Kansas City remains a great cocktail town, with cutting-edge menus even where tourists might not expect them. Extend the night at the adjoining Stockyards Brewing Co., which shares the restaurant’s cattleman theme, or pop across the street to The Campground for a modern cocktail in a moody, intimate room. Mean Mule, a local distillery specializing in agave spirits, offers some of the most daring cocktails in the city right now, with a sprinkling of savory options inspired by ranch dressing or French onion soup (don’t knock it until you’ve tried it!). A short Uber or Lyft from downtown, in Shawnee, Kansas, are two James Beard–nominated sister bars, Drastic Measures and Wild Child. Drastic is the elder sibling, with a mature feel and a thoroughly dialed-in menu of well balanced and approachable drinks. Wild Child is a little more manic—in the best way—with bigger swings, weirder glassware, and a more prominent spirit-free menu.

Dive bar seekers will feel at home in Chez Charlie, which offers great darts, a creaky old jukebox, and a clientele that skews younger and more counterculture. Old heads tend to post up next door at Fitz’s Blarney Stone, a townie bar with cheap drinks and seasoned regulars.

Watching the World Cup in Kansas City

Kansas City will host six matches at Arrowhead Stadium’s (known as Kansas City Stadium for the World Cup) GEHA Field. Soccer fans interested in seeing the games live can purchase World Cup 2026 tickets at FIFA’s official ticketing portal, authorized hospitality providers such as Pitchside, and secondary sites like SeatGeek and VividSeats. The matches play throughout June and July with dates set for June 16, 20, 25, 2, a Round of 32 match on July 3, and a quarterfinal on July 11.

If you’re simply looking for a place to post up and watch some World Cup matches with a pint in hand, your best bet is to head downtown. Johnny’s Tavern and No Other Pub in the Power & Light entertainment district cater to soccer fans, with friendly staff and a mosaic of screens. For a more intimate environment, check out The Dub, which has a focus on women’s sports, or travel south to Gael’s, an LGBTQ+ friendly sports bar and grill.

Kansas City was the first US city recognized as a UNESCO City of Music for its rich legacy of jazz and the blues.

What to do in Kansas City

Whether you’re attending a World Cup game this summer or not, make time to see the KC Current, the city’s league-topping NWSL team. The Current’s dedicated stadium, nestled on the banks of the Missouri River, is packed with local vendors like Yoli Tortilleria and Italian Sausage Co., turning “stadium food” into a compliment.

Jazz and blues are part of the city’s cultural fabric, and the reason Kansas City became the first and only US city to receive a UNESCO City of Music designation. For a primer, take a spin through the compact American Jazz Museum on 18th and Vine and follow it up with some live jazz at the museum’s adjoining club, The Blue Room. Night owls can grab a pint at nearby Vine St. Brewing Co., the city’s first Black-owned brewery, and then head to the Mutual Musicians Foundation, where for decades, musicians have congregated to unwind after the night’s gigs and jam together until dawn. (Don’t expect the party to get started here until 2 a.m.) Outside the Jazz District, but convenient to other attractions, are the Green Lady Lounge and the Black Dolphin, handsomely appointed clubs popular with locals and tourists alike.

And jazz is just the tip of the Kansas City's cultural iceberg. The Negro Leagues Baseball Museum (adjacent to the Jazz Museum) is a thorough introduction to a sport and league that shaped the city. History buffs and dilettantes alike will appreciate the National World War I Museum, which is comprehensive but smartly designed. For a more compact slice of local history, visit The Museum of Kansas City, which offers four floors of exhibits inside the 1910 home of a local lumber baron. Several major expansions (including the construction of a James Turrell Skyspace) are currently in the works. The National Museum of Toys and Miniatures, on the University of Missouri-Kansas City’s campus, is a delightfully quirky way to spend an afternoon, with intricate dollhouse interiors you’ll need a jeweler’s loupe to fully appreciate. Literature lovers should journey north of the river to visit one of the city’s newest attractions: The Rabbit hOle, an enormous, immersive children’s literature museum and de facto jobs program for the city’s artists. The hOle brings beloved storybooks to life through interactive exhibits with enough magic to charm even childless adults.

Stay at The Crossroads Hotel for in-house Italian restaurant Lazia, which dishes out creative pasta dishes that defy hotel restaurant clichés.

Where to stay in Kansas City

While KC has no shortage of downtown hotels, some of the best accommodations are in the Crossroads neighborhood, which is walkable to dozens of art galleries, jazz clubs, bars, and restaurants. The Crossroads Hotel offers hip, modern rooms and a cliché-defying hotel restaurant, Lazia, that serves some of the city’s most creative fresh pasta dishes. (Even the pizzas at the hotel’s lobby bar are better than they have any right to be.) For a little more privacy in even hipper environs, there’s Hotel No Vacancy, a boutique with eight eclectic guest rooms and a sumptuous first-floor cocktail lounge.

Art lovers hoping for a quieter place to rest should look further south at The Truitt, a boutique hotel operating in a historic mansion in the tree-lined residential neighborhood of Southmoreland. While nightlife is more limited, The Truitt is steps away from the comprehensive Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, the Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art, and the Country Club Plaza shopping district.

Modern, light-filled Westside home

Shop at

Airbnb

Carriage house apartment 12 minutes from Arrowhead

Shop at

Airbnb

Centrally located industrial flat

Shop at

Airbnb

Three-bedroom Victorian home with backyard

Shop at

Airbnb

Luxury two-bed less than 20 minutes from the stadium

Shop at

Airbnb