Through A Glass Productions

4747 Wyandotte Street
Kansas City, MO 64112
http://www.kcmasterpiece.com/

Oh, wow, how to put this...

Were there no Gates or Arthur Bryant's, KC Masterpiece BBQ Restaurant would probably be one of the great places to be in the world. But those other restaurants do indeed exist in this town. Gates is actually only about a five-minute drive from KCM if you take I-435, and AB's isn't much furthur away. You can hit superior BBQ with rocks from the parking lot. It's like visiting Rome and being in some little cathdral off of Repulic Square and thinking to yourself "This is cool, but why aren't I in St. Peter's Basillica being absolutely blown away?"

Plus they're everywhere. I may as well review an Applebee's. I could tell you about the experience I had, or I can tell you to walk down the street and have more or less the same experience, minus Jeremy's bitching about not being at Arthur Bryant's. And the sauce is sold in grocery stores in cities and towns that don't have KCM restaurants, so I don't have to tell you about that.

I'm not going to point the finger at KCM and complain that they've sold out. I'm not a barbeque snob. I won't turn up my nose at them. Because if I turn my nose up too high, I catch a whiff of better barbeque and then I'm tempted to be snobby again.

So how did we end up here when other restaurants are so much closer? Therein lies the advantage to KCM. In a total BBQ restaurant, you don't have a choice of BBQ and non-BBQ items. If you order ice cream, it comes slathered in sauce and with a side of cole slaw. But KC Masterpiece plays it safe by including non-BBQ items on the menu. This factors into my desicion not at all, but the wife, well, the wife doesn't really like barbeque.

I know, I know. I assure you, she has many other wonderful qualities that make up for this shortcoming. And I do wear the pants in this relationship. But I also want to use my co-owned bed at night, and so every now and then concessions must be made.

So, in summary, KC Masterpiece isn't really a "masterpiece" of anything. It's more of a master-peace, as in the masterful peace between a man and a woman who are both well-fed, even if it's not on the BBQ of the gods themselves, located just down the street.