barbecue, brisket

Bates City Bar B Que of Shawnee

December 9, 2017 by Joe Mathieu

Bates City brisket sandwich

Today I visited Bates City Bar-B-Que of Shawnee. It is located on the Southeast corner of Shawnee Mission Parkway and Quivira in a strip mall. According to their website, Bates City of Shawnee is a father and son operation that has been going strong in Shawnee for over 17 years.

I arrived around 11:40 on Friday. There is a lot of “stuff” on the walls in this place. License plates, sports memorabilia and posters, etc. This is a restaurant where you order at the counter and they serve your food right there. Grab a tray, order, and pay. Pretty simple! The setup reminds me of how you order at Joe’s KC or Arthur Bryants. I ordered a brisket sandwich and fries. Received my order very quickly. My bill was around ten dollars, which is pretty good for a brisket sandwich and fries.

I had a seat in a booth and dug right in. I was pretty disappointed in the sandwich. It is served with sauce on it and the brisket is thinly cut. The meat was room temperature, which I would call “cold,” and was very bland, even with the sauce. The meat was tender but a bit chewy and had way too much sauce on it for my taste. The sauce was also pretty sweet compared to other places, and you all know by now that I don’t like sweet barbecue sauce.

The fries are shoestring style and were pretty good. They do serve a huge helping of fries, which is a plus. The sandwich is also a pretty hefty serving of brisket.