This Week in Kansas City: a molcajete, a bagpipe shop, and a restaurant that asked

Welcome back to This Week in KC, The Stare’s weekly recap of the stuff that actually makes this a city worth living in.

Not the primary, not the amendments. We covered those Tuesday night, and so did everybody else. This is the other list: the things that entered Kansas City’s field of view for the first time between August 1 and August 7.

Each section carries a counter: how many stories fell into that corner of local life this week, across 18 KC newsrooms. The bar shows how it stacks against the others. It’s not a ranking by volume. It’s a ranking by new to you.

The best opening of the week is a man standing behind a counter mashing avocado into a volcanic rock.

Rulber De la Torre already owns Mi Ranchito: five locations in Johnson County and two more west in Kansas. That is a finished career. He opened another restaurant anyway. Rulber’s Restaurant Mas Cantina is at 5358 W. 95th St. in Prairie Village, in the Meadowbrook center at 95th and Nall, and it opened in late July. The reason he gives the Johnson County Post is the most restaurant-owner sentence ever recorded: “I started putting a lot of recipes together, and I said, ‘I could probably open a different restaurant.’” The recipes had nowhere to go. So he built them a room.

The rest of the openings, briskly. Q39 opened its fourth and largest location Monday, 10,000 square feet at 240 SW Oldham Pkwy in Lee’s Summit, per KCTV5. Kelly Magee opened the first Q39 in midtown in 2014 on the strength of her late husband Rob’s competition barbecue; twelve years on, it’s a chain, and it got there without anybody calling it one. World Fresh Market opened its second KC-area store Wednesday in the Northland. L.L. Bean is coming back to Johnson County at Overland Park’s Bluhawk development, roughly three years after it left. Black Friday Outlet, an East Coast discount retailer, soft-opened in Shawnee, its first store in the metro. Per The Pitch, Añejo Modern Mexican Cuisine now has a third location.

Last week this list ended on Lilly’s Cantina asking for help. This week is the answer.

Construction on Southwest Boulevard had taken the Westside restaurant’s parking and most of its foot traffic, and the World Cup crowds that were supposed to cover the gap never came in the promised numbers. Owner Teresa Grado did the hard thing, which was not the cooking. She got on social media and asked.

Per KSHB, the tables filled with new customers, old ones, and catering orders. Her line about it: “My city has come through like no other.”

The restaurant is not out of trouble, and KSHB says so plainly; a good three weeks is not a saved year. Meanwhile, the city is now working up a Small Business Interruption Fund for businesses hurt by its own construction, which is the part of this story that outlives the story. A neighborhood can only pass the hat so many times.

Kenan Orhan grew up in Overland Park, came back in 2018, and writes full-time here. His debut novel, The Renovation, is on the 2026 Booker Prize longlist, thirteen books announced July 28. The premise, per The Pitch: a woman’s renovated bathroom turns out to contain not a bathtub but a maximum-security Turkish prison, guards included. Six finalists are named September 22 and the winner November 9. If it goes his way he’d be the first Kansas City-based writer to take it.

Also in the who-knew file: J. Higgins, the bagpipe and kilt shop, has moved into Old Town Lenexa at 9211 Pflumm Road after about twenty-six years in an industrial park. John Higgins founded it in 1983. It stocks north of 5,000 items and outfits police and fire honor guards, which means a good number of the pipers you’ve heard at a KC funeral were kitted out in a strip mall in Lenexa. A two-year build-out ended with the company’s name over a door in Old Town.

Beccy Yocham is retiring as Lenexa’s city manager after nearly thirty years with the city, and she’ll stay until a replacement is found. Thirty years in one city hall is its own kind of monument.

In Blue Springs, Christina Lampert found Opossum Hollow Wildlife Rehab and nominated the woman who runs it for FOX4’s Pay It Forward. Her reason was four words long: “I just love what the rehab does.”

In Kansas City, Kansas, neighbors took over a city block on Sunday for a “Survival Revival” at Bethany Park, handing out what struggling families needed. In south Kansas City, the Martin City Telegraph profiled a group of animal advocates whose stated goal (“Our ultimate goal is to help people and their dogs”) puts the two halves in the right order. North Kansas City Schools ran Stuff the Bus on Friday at a Gladstone big-box store, collecting supplies for students who need them. The Community Blood Center is giving away tickets to get people in the chair; the local supply is thin enough that a free ticket is a reasonable ask. A five-year-old with leukemia also inspired a blood drive at a metro entertainment venue days before starting kindergarten, which is a sentence that should not be as heavy as it is.

Biggest section of the week, and it isn’t close.

Kessler Park was established in 1895 and has sat in the Northeast’s backyard for 131 years. Northeast News spent the week on the people trying to bring it back, which is a job that never has an end date and rarely has a press conference.

Blue Springs is putting a walking trail through Central Park at 11th and Walnut as downtown work continues. Platte City is getting its first pickleball courts and a dog park. The Landmark reports the city ranks both among its highest priorities, and if you have opinions about that ranking, so does everyone. A streetcar rider survey after the Riverfront Extension came back satisfied on frequency, reliability, safety and ease of use, which is a boring result and exactly the one you want. The KC Sunflower Festival opened the month. Melissa Etheridge plays Current Landing on the riverfront, free, at the new entertainment area next to CPKC Stadium. The 18th & Vine Arts Festival also named its Live on the Vine finalists — local musicians competing for a package built to move a career rather than buy a night out.

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Looking ahead: 816 Day is Sunday, August 16. IN Kansas City has already rounded up the deals, and the rest of the metro will spend the week remembering it has an area code worth celebrating.

Back Friday.

Corrections: corrections@kcstare.com. Something good happening in your corner of the metro? Tell us.