Food recs: Kansas City's best restaurants for sharing food and eating family-style

Who said you can only try one item off the menu? These Kansas City restaurants — spanning Korean, tapas and others cuisines — encourage ordering big dishes for the table, family-style, or picking a handful of small plates and passing them around.
There’s nothing quite like a shared meal with family and friends.

“Sharing food is inherently social,” writer and author Pete Dulin told KCUR’s Up To Date. “It can be a bonding experience to have that shared time, as well as the food and drink at the table.”

Rather than everyone picking a dish for themselves and themselves alone, some restaurants are designed for ordering family-style, when several large dishes are ordered for the table to divvy up between diners. In addition to improving our relationships with others, family-style dining has deep roots in many cultures.

Carlton Logan, co-administrator of the Kansas City EatsFacebook group, thinks family-style dining actually gained popularity during the pandemic.

“We saw a lot of restaurants pivot and decide to do takeout, and a lot of those dishes were offered as, ‘Here’s servings for four, here’s servings for eight,” Logan said.