Review: 2017 Worlds of Fun Brew & BBQ

Well, the first night of Worlds of Fun BBQ and Brew Festival is in the bag, and we are going to take you on a little BBQ culinary adventure.

The Brew & BBQ festival is in its third year at the park and takes place in the Scandinavia section of Worlds of Fun. There were six food/beer booths to try out this year featuring local breweries and tasting plates of BBQ.

The first booth we stopped at was the Cinder Block Brewery booth that had Barbecue Chicken & Waffles. This delicious concoction was served in a savory waffle cone with smoked BBQ chicken, baked beans and coleslaw. The serving was a very large portion and had great flavor. The beers we tried were also spot on, the Pavers Porter and Cherry Cider.

Next we went on to the KC Bier Company booth that was paired with a smoked jalapeno sausage with original or Creole mustard. The sausage was decent but was lacking the mustard sauce that was mentioned in the description. We did try it with the original Worlds of Fun BBQ sauce that amped it up a bit. KC Bier Company is known for having traditional German beers that are light and easy drinking. We paired the food with Dunkel and Hefeweizen.

We were most excited about the next booth featuring Tallgrass Brewing Co with the BBQ Dough-nuts!! YES PLEASE! The Doughnuts were small cake doughnuts that were fried and tossed in a signature BBQ spice and drizzled with a caramel glaze, we added some BBQ sauce as well, why not right?! The flavors of all the ingredients together were awesome! We did wish the doughnuts were a little bit bigger and fried in hotter oil as they did pick up quite a bit of the oil when frying. We tried two brews from Tallgrass as well, the Buffalo Sweat and Raspberry Jam.

Next up was the Coop Ale Works booth. The food offering here was the Slow Smoked BBQ Ribs. The portion was two big BBQ ribs with one of the best BBQ rubs we have ever tried. Messy and delicious! The beer from Coop Ale Works did not stand out as much, maybe because the food was the star here. We had the DNR and the Horny Toad Blonde.

If you love barbecue corn on the cobb, you will love this next booth. Piney River booth was paired with Corn on the Cobb freshly grilled and seasoned with BBQ spice butter. The corn needed to be cooked a little longer in our opinion and the butter did not have much of a BBQ flavor we had hoped. The beers we tried from Piney River were the Float Trip Ale and Black Walnut Wheat.

Lastly we stopped at the Nebraska Brewing Company booth. The food offering here was the Smoked Turkey Tenderloin Slider marinated in BBQ spice butter with remoulade and crispy fried onions. When we first got the “slider” it had no bun, remoulade or crispy onions. We went back to the booth to grab the slider bun but they did not have the remoulade or crispy onions. The flavor was great but we are curious to see if the missing ingredients make this even more of a stand out dish. The beers we tried from Nebraska Brewing Company were the EOS Hefeweizen and the West Coast IPA.

We would definitely recommend this event to anyone that is in the Kansas City area and loves BBQ and Beer! We will be attending again to see if the food gets even better throughout the event.

Reference: Additional details on the Worlds of Fun Brew & BBQ

Special thanks to Aaron and Sarah from Theme Parkers Podcast for attending the Worlds of Fun Brew & BBQ on our behalf!