Thanks to Scott’s Kitchen, travelers with even the shortest layovers have no excuse to pass on Kansas City barbecue. Scott’s Northland location is as close as you can get to Kansas City International Airport without going through security. It’s also one of the only places in the city where you can order barbecue at 7 a.m. If you go for breakfast, try the brisket tacos. If you go for lunch — still try the brisket tacos. The spice-crusted, thick-sliced brisket is just one of many reasons locals without travel plans make the drive to the area.

In a city defined by its “melting pit” embrace of miscellaneous meats, there’s something radical 

about specialization. After a long stint toting his offset smoker around the city in a trailer, KC Turkeyleggman (née Matthew Montgomery) opened his first permanent location last year, where he continues his laser focus on glossy, super-sized turkey legs smoked over a blend of hickory, cherry, and pecan. The most popular order here is the Bussdown Legg, a turkey leg slashed open and stuffed with Montgomery’s gooey mac and cheese (reminiscent of the legs at Houston’s famous Turkey Leg Hut). If that sounds gimmicky, trust that the barbecuing isn’t. Montgomery’s leggs are rich and smoky, with moist meat and ideally crisp, bronzed skin. Don’t skip the sides: The mixed greens (a blend of kale and collards) are some of the best in the city, studded with smoky morsels of — you guessed it — turkey. Carry-out if you can; dine-in space is limited to just one table and a few stools.

There’s no secret to the success of Chef J, a next-gen barbecue destination in the city’s historic Stockyards District. Pitmaster Justin Easterwood’s 1,000-gallon offset smoker — which he calls “Big Mila”— is parked right outside. That smoker yields thick, fall-apart slices of beef brisket and tender ribs with a bold bark. The sandwiches are just as good. Try the Tennessee Dip, a pulled pork sandwich served with a cup of spicy, vinegary red sauce. Easterwood isn’t precious about mixing regional influences: His gold sauce, coarse with mustard, hints at South Carolina, while his signature sauce is vinegar-based and stippled with pepper and celery seed. Kansas Citians have embraced him all the same. A new, larger location (with four custom-built offset smokers) is in the works for KC’s Pennway Point district, with an opening tentatively slated for fall 2024.

On the weekends, you’ll find a mix of locals, tourists, and Beltway politicians at this Jazz District restaurant, which writer Calvin Trillin famously decreed “the single best restaurant in the world” in 1972. Bryant’s decor hasn’t changed much since Trillin’s visit: a time capsule of Formica, framed newspaper clippings, and greasy floor tiles. The cooking has changed, though. To meet demand, Bryant’s now cubes whole briskets for most of its burnt ends. (To ensure your ends are cut from the brisket point, go with the 3B sandwich.) No matter what you order, top it with a generous splurt of Bryant’s brick-red, distinctively bitter sauce. No one makes a sauce like Bryant’s — whether that’s good or bad is one of the city’s enduring culinary debates.

Barbecue snobs tend to overlook restaurants with cloth napkins and metal silverware. But at Fiorella’s Jack Stack, a single, humble side dish has kept the critics at bay: Kansas City-style cheesy corn. Jack Stack popularized the dish — a slightly tangy, velvety cheese sauce cut with crisp morsels of smoky pit ham — in the 1980s, and it’s since become an essential part of the city’s barbecue tradition. For a main, you can’t go wrong with an order of ham, but you may as well lean into the upscale atmosphere with the unique (and extravagant) crown prime beef rib. Although Jack Stack has six metro locations, the Freight House restaurant, just off the streetcar line, is particularly cute and convenient for tourists.

This dressed-down sandwich spot is more often populated with locals on their lunch breaks than tourists. That might have something to do with Edwards’s long-time slogan: “Eat it an’ beat it.” Sure enough, the food comes out fast so customers can get back to their jobs, but no one will give you any guff for camping out in one of the red banquet chairs or taking the time to squirt an extra layer of glossy, smoky sauce onto your sandwich. The most famous option is the Big D: brisket on rye with Swiss cheese and a crunchy crown of onion rings.

Q39 is a bit more polished than some competitors, the kind of place where there’s a nontrivial possibility of seeing someone spray sauce onto a starched collar. But this family-friendly restaurant is a local favorite for its uncanny ability to turn out consistent barbecue at a high volume. Founder Rob Magee, who died in 2021, cut his teeth on the competition barbecue circuit, and the competition-ready combo plates remain the thing to order here. The original location in Midtown is always crowded, so make a reservation or plan on a long wait; it’s easier to snag a table at Q39 South in Overland Park, Kansas. (A third location in Lawrence, Kansas, is set to open this fall.)

It would be easy to survey Char Bar’s industrial-chic dining room and expansive, outdoor beer garden (complete with a fire pit and bocce courts), and write it off as style over substance. That would be a mistake. Sure, Char Bar is crowd-pleasing, with table-service, brunch cocktails, and vegetarian entrees. But the restaurant is also quietly serving some of the best burnt ends in the city, which perfectly balance seasoned bark and yielding bite. Although Char Bar has two locations, the original Westport restaurant is more centrally located.

All of the action happens right under your nose at this classic counter-service restaurant, where cooks shuffle whole briskets, racks of ribs, and hams around a three-tiered pit lacquered jet-black with grease. Although founder LC Richardson died in 2021, his granddaughter, Tausha Hammett, runs the restaurant now and has kept the recipes (and that original three-tiered pit) in place. Stick with the classics: burnt ends, brisket, and ribs. Like a few other old-school Kansas City joints, LC’s lets you order your ribs from the “short end” or “long end” (the long-end ribs tend to be better rendered).

Maybe it’s the 15-minute drive from downtown, or maybe it’s that you have to pass by LC’s Bar-B-Q on the way to get here — whatever the reason, Big T’s has flown relatively under the radar compared to some of the city’s other barbecue giants. That’s a shame, because the wood-fired brisket and ribs coming out of Timothy Jones’s brick pit are consistently great. Dine in to soak up the restaurant’s charmingly retro vibes, with decor evoking KC’s stockyard roots.

Few pitmasters have had as big an influence on KC barbecue in recent years as Tyler Harp. Since coming on the scene in 2019, he’s launched a local barbecue festival and an educational podcast, and inspired a host of aspiring craft barbecuers to switch to offset smokers. Get here early to sample Harp’s incredibly rich sausages and meltingly soft, thick-sliced brisket. If you’re thinking that brisket sounds more Texas-style, you’re right. But Harp has never let regional expectations define his cooking, adopting techniques from across the country even as he pays tribute to the pitmasters that first put KC on the map.

Note: Harp Barbecue plans to close for several weeks and reopen this fall at 12094 W. 135th Street, Overland Park, KS, 66221.