Whether you’re a busy singleton with not enough time to even think about the next meal, or you have a spouse or entire family to feed and are too swamped to plan dinner tonight, much less cook one, you need to have at the ready some quick, easy meals that you can serve in a flash. Â
Convenience is what you need when it comes to meal planning. With a fine selection of shops, stores, and now even restaurants offering house-made menu items or grab-and-go meals you can heat and eat at home, you can provide a feast for a family (and yourself) in minutes, if you know where to go and what to get. Â
To help you find your meal-planning mojo, here are a few places where you can quickly pick up something fresh and delicious for dinner tonight. You might even discover a new favorite dish you can drop into your weekly rotation.Â
Now that—and time spent eating around the table with your family—is worth its weight in gold.Â
French MarketÂ
When the Quillec family moved their popular French Market to a much larger space in The Shops at Prairie Village, it allowed them to simply transform their operation into a one-stop shop to sip and savor. With a pretty dining room and full bar with both indoor and patio seating, the restaurant is bustling day and night. The market also grew with the inclusion of much larger grab-and-go cases filled with more prepared boxed meals, sides, soups, and salads, along with packaged wine and beer. Their pastry counter offers delectable desserts and loaves of French bread to enjoy at home. Longtime customers are thrilled that they still carry retail items, including French dishware, table linens, and cookbooks perfect for that last-minute gift. Â
EV Grab & Go
Extra Virgin is a colorful and casual spot to land for delicious Mediterranean shared plates, fantastic cocktails, and excellent wine in the Crossroads. Now, Michael and Nancy Smith have expanded the seating for Extra Virgin into the former Michael Smith restaurant space, and opened a new market that sells an impressive selection of gourmet delights. Utilizing their enviable corner spot on Main Street, and with the original Michael Smith restaurant kitchen still intact, EV Grab & Go is making fresh pastas and a variety of sauces, dips, spreads, salads, lamb skewers, and duck meatballs you can pick up and enjoy at home. Shop the shelves stocked with gourmet olive oils, vinegars, marinated olives, cheeses, nuts, fresh herbs, produce, anchovies, and a fine selection of wine and cocktail ice to-go.
The Market at Meadowbrook
Open seven days a week from 7 a.m. to 8 p.m., The Market at Meadowbrook sits in the middle of Meadowbrook Park, serving as a convenient social hub for those who live or work nearby. With the café menu focused on casual, seasonal, house-made breakfast, lunch, and dinner items, you can also shop their fully-stocked market area and pick up meal planning staples. Choose from their selection of soups, stews, salads and sandwiches along with ready-to-reheat entrées and sides, including favorites like lasagna, shrimp pasta, barbecue pork, and chicken pot pie. There are also take-and-bake cookies and cinnamon rolls you can make at home.
Local Pig
The chef Alex Pope and his business partner, Matt Kafka, relocated their butcher shop, Local Pig, and their restaurant, Pigwich, to the City Market in 2019 to give their business room to grow—and grow it did. The move allowed Local Pig to expand its retail footprint to include more locally made food items as well as select local spirits and bottles of still and sparkling wine. Couple that with their excellent selection of sausages, charcuterie, and various pickles, and dinner is done. But if you want to save your sausages for another meal, then round the corner to Pigwich and get a Pigwich pulled pork sandwich or the East Bottoms Burger and an order of French fries to eat for dinner tonight.
Baba’s PantryÂ
Yahia Kamal has gone by a lot of nicknames in the more than 25 years he has been making Palestinian food for the people of Kansas City, but when it came to his family-run café and market, Baba’s Pantry, he goes by the name his family calls him: Dad. Inside the colorful storefront in East Brookside, you’ll find pita and wraps stuffed with creamy hummus, crunchy falafel, chicken shawarma and kebab meat, along with fresh salads, such as fattoush and tabouli. Don’t miss their fine selection of desserts. All menu items are made to order, and they’re meant to highlight the freshly made offerings in their refrigerated case so you can enjoy them at home.
Carne Diem Fine Meats & Pantry
The husband-and-wife culinary team of Sarah Nelson and Louis Guerrieri have opened the doors to their sleek new butcher shop and seafood spot, Carne Diem. The storefront offers cuts of beef, pork, chicken and duck from Barham Family Farms and lamb from Green Dirt Farm, along with their made-in-house sausages and sustainable seafood selection. But it’s the gourmet meal kits, prepared sandwiches, soups, salads and cheese and pantry staples, including tinned fish, pasta, sauces, and bread from Ibis Bakery, that you’ll head to for the handy grab-and-go selection. Wine and spirits also stock the shelves in the Briarcliff shop.
Hemma HemmaÂ
The word hemma means “at home” in Swedish, and that perfectly describes the style of food the chef and owner Ashley Bare is serving at Hemma Hemma—her cute-as-a-button restaurant, cooking-class spot, and market located in the Waldo neighborhood. The market offers a variety of items that change weekly. You’ll find house-made soups, such as her fantastic Tomato Thai Basil, along with sandwiches, salads, and grain and veggie bowls. There are even heat-and-eat family-sized entrées and desserts. Swing in for lunch with a friend or for a coffee and pastry and leave with dinner for the whole family.
CaffetteriaÂ
Jo Marie Scaglia’s thoroughly modern café and market, Caffetteria, opened in The Shops of Prairie Village in 2018. Inspired by stylish cafés and coffee bars in Italy, Scaglia comes by her love of food honestly. Her menu reflects that, offering breakfast, lunch, and dinner options along with a sizable market area where you can take a little love home with you. Her refrigerated cases are full of grab-and-go entrée meals lifted straight from her menu, including frozen house-made pizzas, enchiladas, lasagna, basil pesto salmon, and more. Look for queso dip, pimento cheese spread, hummus, chicken and tuna salads along with house-made salad dressings and sauces all packaged and ready to go.
Yoli TortilleriaÂ
Born and raised in Sonora, Mexico, owner Marissa Gencarelli started Yoli Tortilleria in Kansas City with her business partner and husband, Mark, in 2017, selling at farmers markets first, and then opening a small retail storefront and kitchen on Kansas City’s Westside. Today, you can find her James Beard award-winning stone-ground heirloom corn tortillas, Sonoran-style flour tortillas, totopos (corn chips), and salsas to feed your next fiesta. Additionally, Gencarelli has also added comforting scratch-made Mexican specialties that are ready to heat and eat at home, including chorizo burritos, tamales filled with pork, chicken, brisket, or vegetables and tlacoyos—blue-and-white corn masa filled with pinto beans and shredded queso Chihuahua.