Restaurants in Lenexa

Just as Ixtapa Mexican Restaurant's name honors the owners' oceanfront hometown in Jalisco, Mexico, the menu honors Mexico's iconic cuisine. These pages brim with favorites such as enchiladas, hefty burritos, and sputtering fajitas with marinated portions of beef, chicken, pork, or shrimp. The choices seem familiar, but there's no denying that their roots cross the International Date Line that separates California from Mexico. Mexican Coca-Cola fills glasses alongside a handful of imported beers, and the tangy crema sauces and vaguely sweet moles are all based on family recipes.

When Travis Dickey opened the first Dickey's Barbecue Pit in Dallas in 1941, he kept his menu small and simple, only cooking up beef brisket, pit hams, and barbecue beans, which he sold alongside potato chips, beer, bottled milk, and sodas. Dickey smoked all of his meat in-house, a practice that put his eatery on the map and one that his sons, Roland and T.D. Dickey, still rely on today. The menu has expanded since Travis’s time behind the grill, offering plates and sandwiches that brim with nine kinds of barbecued meats, including spicy cheddar sausages, pork ribs, polish sausage, and Texas-style beef brisket that’s chopped to order. Several types of baked potatoes are piled high with meats and cheeses, which diners can wash down with a gallon of tea or Dickey's signature 32-ounce big yellow cup of soda. Staying true to the same spirit of hospitality that helped Dickey's franchise swell to more than 200 spots around the country, cooks at each location always include a buttery roll, a homestyle side, such as jalapeño beans and fried okra, dill pickles, and free ice cream with every meat plate.

“Laissez les bon temps rouler” is a favorite saying at Jazz, a Louisiana Kitchen; translated from French, it means, “let the good times roll.” With a blend of Cajun cuisine, cold drinks, and live music, the restaurant recreates the rollicking atmosphere of New Orleans' French Quarter. In the kitchen, chefs orchestrate multiple Gulf Coast flavors in classic louisiana catfish po'boys and blackened-shrimp platters, or let simple, properly prepared oysters and broiled crawfish stand on their own. Servers draw frothy mugs of beer from local breweries CIB and Keg Creek or mix specialty cocktails and frozen daiquiris. The lively atmosphere has drawn musicians such as two-time Grammy nominee Gerald Clayton and Mr. Tambourine Man.

Though the pit masters manning the grills at Burnt End BBQ know a good deal about how to bring out the complex flavors of a slab of barbecue, they’re not here to tell you how to eat it. That’s why most of the dishes on the menu are mere suggestions, allowing clients some flexibility on what meat and homestyle sides they choose to chow down upon. Customers can cull from six core meats such as the signature burnt ends, brisket, or pulled pork with sides ranging from the sweet and spicy slaw to creamy cheese corn. The chefs do create a few signature sandwiches and barbecue bowls to combine the best of their smoked meats and sides over a chewy mound of cornbread, which is the kind of mound from which gingerbread men pitch. Meats and sides are also available á la carte by the pound and pint, easily combining into full meals.

Within Blue Yuu’s kitchen, chefs harmonize influences from Japanese, Chinese, Thai, and Korean cuisine. Sushi chefs wrap rice and fresh fish with sheets of nori as servers deliver sizzling iron plates of Szechuan-style seafood and black pepper beef. Hot stoneware cossets bibimbaps, which consist of vegetables, kimchi, egg, and hot sauce. Dulcet sauces coat Chinese dishes such as mango chicken and General Tso’s chicken, and provide contrast to fiery Thai curries.

Founded by a fusion of a skilled chef, his wife, and their business partner, Nica's 320 aims to meld the traditional flavors of Italian, Thai, Caribbean, French, and Cajun cuisines into culinary gold. In the kitchen, chef Bryan Merker and his team plate a diverse menu that blends those influences into tasty entrees and mix-and-match specialties so creative they rival the gourmet cheese plates that NASA brought back from the moon.

Inside Nica's 320’s exposed-brick dining room, constellations of local artwork contrast with a hammered-steel-topped bar that dispenses cocktails and cold showers beneath an ornate absinthe fountain. Lighting fixtures dangle from exposed ceilings, casting an amorous glow over cornbread pancakes, thai chicken, korean pork, jerk-steak slider trios, and sticky-rice crab cakes laced with savory cheddar and red-chili jam. Steaming plates of redefined risotto, pan-fried noodles, man n' cheese, and beignets pique curious palates. Outside, an open-air patio soaks its occupants in gentle breezes that —like the fountain—have the power to pacify.