Joe's Kansas City Bar-B-Que, founded in 1996, is the youngest of Kansas City's BBQ institutions — and the one with perhaps the most devoted national following among food critics and serious barbecue pilgrims. Jeff and Joy Stehney started the restaurant in a working gas station in Westport, and the original location still operates that way: you walk past the gas pumps, through the door, and into one of the most acclaimed barbecue joints in the country. The Z-Man sandwich — brisket, smoked provolone, onion rings, and pickled jalapeños on a kaiser roll — has been called one of the greatest sandwiches in America by multiple food publications.
Joe's represents the third generation of Kansas City BBQ, following the pioneers like Henry Perry and Arthur Bryant and the mid-century establishments like Gates: a generation trained in competition barbecue culture, technically rigorous, attentive to wood selection and fire management in a way that the old pit masters understood intuitively but rarely articulated. Joe's wins competitions at the American Royal World Series of Barbecue in Kansas City, the largest BBQ competition in the world. The gas station setting is either charming or off-putting depending on your tolerance for irony, but the brisket is never off-putting.