Kansas City has long been known as a Cowtown, thanks to the rich history of the West Bottom’s livestock exchange and the advent of the railroads that allowed the transportation of cattle from all over the country.
Yet, no matter how much we love a good Kansas City strip in this town, one can’t live on red meat alone. Sometimes we need fresh fish and seafood in our diet to quench that craving for perfectly boiled and seasoned peel-and-eat shrimp, a creamy lobster roll, crunchy, fried fish and chips, a dozen raw oysters, or even a good poke bowl.
The good news is that, thanks to modern transportation, quality seafood isn’t hard to find. Fresh fish and shellfish arrive daily at the Kansas City International Airport, where restaurant chefs select their catch of the day. There’s also several wholesale fish companies in town delivering fresh fish directly to the back doors of restaurants across the metro.
There’s something about eating chilled seafood on a hot summer day that just feels right, even in a landlocked city like ours. Perhaps we’re channeling previous coastal vacations, or just looking for a lighter meal to enjoy when the temperatures start to climb.
In Kansas City, there are many restaurants happy to cater to our summer seafood cravings. Everything from casual spots where you can roll in wearing shorts, sit outside with a cold beer, and order a pile of crab legs or fried shrimp, to fine-dining establishments ready to celebrate a special occasion with a bottle of wine and Dover sole meunière, deboned tableside.
The newest, buzzy seafood spot is Shark Tank’s famed Cousins Maine Lobster food truck, which rolled into the city earlier this summer and has been appearing at festivals and breweries around town, serving up lobster rolls, lobster bisque, lobster tacos, and tots.
Sounds like this Cowtown is ready to embrace more surf with their turf.
Pearl Tavern
With the success of their other restaurants—Summit Grill, Bōru Asian Eatery, Third Street Social, and South of Summit—owners Andy Lock and Domhnall Molloy tapped into their previous vast seafood sourcing experience at McCormick & Schmick’s to open Pearl Tavern. This seafood sister concept opened in Lee’s Summit in 2018. The menu is packed with everyone’s seafood house favorites, from crabcakes to New England clam chowder and fish and chips to lobster rolls. There are also elegant fish dishes, including the miso Chilean sea bass served with veggies and black forbidden rice. It’s worth setting sail for Pearl Tavern.
Pierpont’s at Union Station
This fine-dining restaurant located inside of Union Station may be celebrating 25 years, but it still remains a popular destination because of its soaring ceilings and warm decor, impressive bar program, prime steak, fresh seafood, and deep wine list. Seafood entrées, such as smoked scallops with citrus beurre blanc or the spicy seafood cioppino made with swordfish, mussels, and shrimp, are created by the executive chef Matt Barnes and his team. Ready to splurge? Share the Big Boy seafood tower for $220. It comes to the table with six Latin-spiced shrimp cocktail, a pound of snow crab legs, eight oysters, two lobster cocktails, ten ounces of hackleback caviar, razor clams in black garlic with mostarda, honeydew-jalapeño mignonette, and a lemon.
Farina
When Michael and Nancy Smith opened Farina in 2019, they cleverly designed their new modern Italian restaurant with a large oyster bar in the front, which gives guests views of bustling Southwest Boulevard through large windows. Reservations are recommended if you want to participate in Farina’s happy hour from 5 to 7:00 p.m., Tuesday through Friday, as the menu is only served at their cocktail bar or oyster bar. Once you settle in and order a drink, you can choose from a selection of raw oysters on the half shell, caviar, seared ahi tuna, Hamachi crudo, sea urchin tacos, smoked trout dip, or jumbo shrimp cocktail. Then sit back and observe the chefs behind the counter shuck your seafood selections right in front of you. It’s dinner and a show.
Earl’s Premier
The owners of Earl’s Premier, Todd Schulte and Cory Dannehl, seemed to have cracked the code of developing intimate eateries with compact menus and quality food and drink within walking distance to a neighborhood. At Earl’s in Brookside, oysters from the raw bar served with a cava mignonette and house cocktail sauce are the way to start, as they are considered the heart and soul of the menu. That, and one of the frozen gin and tonic cocktails, are the beginnings to a great meal at Earl’s. The chilled sweet corn vichyssoise with lump crabmeat is perfect for summer’s brutal temps, as is the chilled peel-and-eat shrimp and market-price lobster roll, which comes with fries and a green salad. It’s also one of the few places in town with a canned fish program, which has been all the rage since the pandemic.
Aqua Penny’s
Cool, coastal vibes with a tropical twist perfectly describes the fish and seafood menu at Aqua Penny’s in the Park Place shopping center. The latest restaurant from the owners of Bamboo Penny’s, Penny and Doug Mufuka, along with local concept design and development specialist, Michael Werner, opened this spring with a raw bar featuring oysters, shrimp, clams, lobsters, and more. They also have clam or mussel steamers with your choice of white wine and garlic sauce or spicy red sauce. Fish entrées lean into tropical Asian flavors, with sesame-encrusted ahi tuna, miso sea bass, a calypso grilled lobster with Caribbean-spiced compound butter, and charred octopus with fire-roasted peppers. With cocktails and a perfectly paired wine list developed by industry veteran Jenn Tosatto and her team, your drinks are in good hands. Leave room for a piece of key lime cheesecake, tableside cherries jubilee, or bananas foster for dessert.
Jarocho
The chef Carlos Falcon and his wife and managing partner, Sayaka Falcon, introduced the Kansas City area to the fish and seafood dishes of Veracruz, Mexico, when they opened their first restaurant, Jarocho Pescados y Mariscos, a decade ago in Kansas City, Kansas. Buoyed by its success, they opened Jarocho South four years later. The seafood menu at Jarocho is a blend of the couple’s cultures, combining Asian technique with his Mexican cuisine. The menus are slightly different, but both locations feature popular dishes, including chili butter oysters, ceviche, sautéed baby octopus in a Thai-chili sauce, and a fried whole snapper. If you’re looking for fresh, creative, and flavorful fish and seafood dishes, this is the place.
The Fish Market
Located in Liberty, just 26 minutes from downtown, near the Fountain Bluff sports complex, sits The Fish Market. From the outside it looks like a well-loved seafood shack or possibly a busy bait shop. Walk by the large fiberglass shark or human-sized crawfish sitting on the patio and into this colorful, casual family-run spot, known for its Cajun-influenced menu, with seafood sourced from the Gulf Coast—serving catfish from Mississippi, and shrimp from Louisiana. There are several fried seafood baskets, which all come with hush puppies and French fries and no less than six delicious dipping sauces. The shrimp po-boy is another good choice, and fried pickles, frog legs, conch fritters, and alligator bites are also on the menu. Don’t leave without getting either the gumbo, jambalaya, or red beans and rice with a side of jalapeño cornbread, and an ice-cold beer in a large schooner glass.
Bosslady’s Famous Shrimp
With a sassy name like Bosslady’s Famous Shrimp, you know the shrimp has got to be good. This casual, woman-owned restaurant has been operating in the Northland on North Oak Trafficway for a decade, serving up well-seasoned or sauced, boiled, batter-fried, or sautéed shrimp along with a handful of crab, crawfish, salmon, chicken, and steak dishes. Owner and executive chef Nashaunda Law takes shrimp seriously. She makes all of her lunch and dinner dishes from scratch. You decide what direction to take your shrimp craving. Will it be sautéed garlic shrimp alfredo? How about stir-fried shrimp with vegetables over white rice? Maybe a shrimp boil or gumbo? Her fried shrimp basket comes with battered and fried butterflied shrimp and French fries—a fan favorite for good reason. For $65, her mini seafood feast is a steal with 15 boiled shrimp, one snow crab leg cluster, one lobster tail, and one-and-a-half pounds of crawfish, along with sausage, potatoes, and corn on the cob.
Eddie V’s Prime Seafood
With so many upscale chains serving steak and seafood on the Country Club Plaza, it can be hard to choose. For great service, style, and seafood, Eddie V’s is a solid choice. Open for dinner only, with a banging happy-hour bar business and live jazz music, this Darden-owned property feels a bit like you’re dining inside your favorite supper club. Start with the popular jumbo lump crab cake or ahi tuna tartare, then order the lobster bisque topped with both cream and cognac. For an entrée, the crispy parmesan- and panko-crusted sole with lemon-garlic butter is hard to beat, but the Chilean sea bass served Hong Kong-style on a bed of sautéed spinach and pickled ginger in a light sherry and soy broth is a simply elegant dish. A bottle of wine from the hefty wine list, and any celebration will feel a bit more special, even if you are just celebrating that it’s a Wednesday night.