How Did Kansas City Become Barbecue City, USA? KCQ Cooks Up A Delicious Tale

Press release from the Kansas City Public Library:

July 2, 2021

When you think of Kansas City, you think of a – perhaps the – barbecue capital of the world. No matter the event, there’s a strong likelihood it will be marked by a backyard barbecue. This is especially true on the Fourth of July.

For this installment of What’s Your KCQ?, a partnership between The Kansas City Star and the Kansas City Public Library, we respond to reader Marcia Hall’s question: Why is Kansas City associated with barbecue more than any other Midwest city?

The basics of Kansas City-style barbecue are easy to understand.

Spice-rubbed meat is slow smoked over a wood fire or coals. The region’s abundant forests of oak and hickory – both hardwoods favored by pitmasters – are a strong point in the city’s favor as a barbecue capital. In this way, it is similar to Memphis-style barbecue. However, we differ from other regional variations on two crucial points.

First, the variety of meats used. Where others focus primarily on beef or pork, practically anything’s on the menu in Kansas City. This is thanks to the next point on Kansas City’s barbecue resume – the stockyards and meatpacking industries that once thrived here.

When the Hannibal Bridge opened in 1869, Kansas City was one of many upstart towns lining the Missouri River. The new bridge, the first permanent rail crossing over the river, positioned the city as the stopping point between western livestock breeders and eastern markets. How did Kansas Citians celebrate the event? With a barbecue, of course.

The Kansas City Livestock Company was established in 1871 to take advantage of the booming industry. By 1950, over 4 million head of livestock were being moved through the city every year.

In 1980, the connection between the historic stockyards district and Kansas City’s signature style was institutionalized with the first annual American Royal World Series of Barbecue. The competition, now in its 41st year, is the largest barbecue competition on the planet.

Meatpackers and butchers were often left with less desirable parts (ribs anyone?), providing a source of cheap product to anyone willing to make use of them. There are even stories of early pitmasters raiding the garbage outside the packing plants and butchers for discarded cuts.

This brings us to the next distinction in Kansas City-style barbecue – the sauce. Where Memphis-style sauce is thin, spicy, and served on the side, we’ve developed a taste for thick, tomato-based sauces, sweetened with brown sugar or molasses and slathered onto the meat before serving.

One thing that all regional styles have in common is the contribution of foodways pioneered by and passed down to the descendants of Black Southerners. The Great Migration, the massive population shift of African Americans out of the South and into northern and Midwestern cities in the early 20th century, helped accelerate this culinary evolution. These new arrivals came seeking work and business opportunities, hoped for a better life for their children, and in the process, gifted us with our signature style of barbecue.

The relationship between the Great Migration and the development of Kansas City barbecue is perfectly encapsulated in the story of King Henry Perry.

Born in Tennessee in 1875, Perry worked as a cook aboard Mississippi River steamships, where he began to develop his craft. In keeping with the Memphis barbecue style, those who tasted his sauce described it as thin, vinegar-based, and so heavy on the cayenne pepper that his customers often winced. He rambled about the Midwest, spending time in Chicago and Minneapolis before arriving in Kansas City in 1907. First working as a porter in a Quality Hill saloon, it wasn’t long before Perry had taken to selling barbecue from a stand in the city’s Garment District.

By 1911, Perry had relocated to a tent at 18th and Vine streets, where he tended a brick-lined pit dug into the ground and already called himself the Barbecue King. Speaking with a Kansas City Star reporter, he described having a hard time making barbecue pay the bills. He admitted, “Lots of times I just throw up my hands and quit altogether and get me a job at $8 or $10 a week.” But, he continued, “I can’t stay away from it. Every time I drift back to this little old tent and start a fire under some kind of a piece of meat.”

This press release was produced by the Kansas City Public Library. The views expressed here are the author’s own.