Kansas City Barbeque

This guide to Kansas City Barbeque in San Diego opens with a two thousand eight kitchen fire that tore through the restaurant so fast firefighters could barely beat it down, leaving owner Martin Blair, who had opened the place with his wife Cindy back in nineteen eighty three, to pick through the wreckage. It follows what he found still standing amid the smoke damage, an old upright piano, and traces that piano back two years after the restaurant opened, when a Paramount scout wandered in for a beer and liked the room enough to bring back a director. The same piano still sits where the fire left it, keys worn smooth by decades of regulars at the bar.