Every few months, someone from out of town asks me where to get barbecue in Overland Park, and I pause just long enough to seem like I’m thinking about it. I’m not. The answer is Joe’s Kansas City on 135th, and it has been for years.
The location on West 135th Street — across from a strip of unremarkable retail — doesn’t put on a show. The parking lot fills up fast on weekends, and the line inside moves at its own pace. If you show up at noon on a Saturday expecting a quick turnaround, you’ve misread the situation. This is not a place that apologizes for making you wait. The brisket takes as long as the brisket takes.
What you’re waiting for: the Z-Man sandwich, which is a smoked brisket situation topped with smoked provolone and two onion rings on a Kaiser roll. It sounds like a lot, and it is a lot, and that’s correct. Ordering it for the first time, you’ll probably feel like you should have split it. By the time you’re done, you won’t feel that way. The burnt ends, when they have them, are worth asking about at the counter before you order anything else — they go fast and they don’t always make it to the board.
Sides are sturdy. The beans have brisket in them, which is either a philosophical statement or just good sense depending on your mood. The fries are fine. Nobody comes here for the fries. The slaw is sharper than you might expect, which helps cut through everything else on the tray.
Pricing is honest for what you get. The Z-Man runs around $14-15, combo plates are in the $18-22 range depending on what you’re stacking. It’s not a cheap lunch, but it’s a real one. The kind where you sit down at a table with a tray of food and don’t look at your phone for twenty minutes because there’s too much to attend to.
The room itself is casual in the way Kansas City barbecue rooms tend to be — wood paneling, a few TVs, the smell of smoke that gets into your jacket and stays there. It’s loud enough on a busy Saturday that you don’t have to worry about the conversation at the next table. The staff is efficient and not particularly precious about anything, which is exactly right.
If you’re trying to avoid the weekend crowd, a weekday lunch — say, a rainy Tuesday when everyone else has talked themselves out of leaving the office — is a genuinely pleasant experience. The line shortens, the room quiets down, and you can actually hear yourself think about whether to get a whole slab or just the half. (Half, unless you’ve made plans for the afternoon that don’t involve a couch.)
The Overland Park location doesn’t have the folklore of the original gas station spot in Kansas City proper, and it doesn’t need it. What it has is the same food, made the same way, in a place you can actually park at without circling the block. For most purposes, that’s the better deal.
