About an hour before opening each day, 48 birds are laid out on a grill, cooked with the help of hickory wood and other hardwoods inside the kitchen space at El Pollo Rey.
The cooking creates so much smoke that the 24-year-old restaurant is enveloped in it. One can see the plume before they even get into the parking lot. And when guests park and get out of their vehicles, they’re hit with a smokey smell to match the view.
“A lot of people come here and say, ‘Hey man, it smells so nice in here,’” said Cesar Quintana, who works at El Pollo Rey and whose family runs the restaurant. “They’ll drive with the windows down and go, ‘I want to give this place a try.’”
Maybe it was the smell that lured them in, or plenty of positive word-of-mouth that exists for El Pollo Rey, but the beloved establishment caught the attention of The New York Times, who recently named the KCK restaurant one of the greatest Mexican restaurants in the country.
El Pollo Rey, on Tuesday, August 18, 2026, in Kansas City. The Kansas City, Kansas staple was recently named to The New York Times list of the 41 greatest Mexican restaurants in the country. Dominick Williams dowilliams@kcstar.com
The article, which was published in August, featured 41 restaurants across the U.S., showcasing the breadth of the cuisine that touches all corners of our nation. It includes Michelin-starred restaurants in California, Mexican markets in Oklahoma City, Sonoran-style taquerías in Arizona and carnitas in New York City.
Brett Anderson, a New York Times food reporter, wrote about El Pollo Rey: “A visit to the area is incomplete without lunch at El Pollo Rey. The vibe is Kansas City barbecue meets Northwestern Mexico. The aroma of spatchcocked, Sinaloa-style chicken, drifting off the restaurant’s hickory wood-fired grills, hits you before you walk in.”
It is like barbecue in a way, with wood cooking the chicken on two grills, manned by a few cooks, but El Pollo Rey only deals in chicken. The ingredient-focused menu is also something that makes it stand out among the several other taquerías and Latin American restaurants that define KCK as a culinary gem in the metro area.
A rarity in Kansas City, you won’t find beef here, and the only signs of pork are in the charro beans.
El Pollo Rey has been that way ever since it opened in 2002, when Quintana’s family cooked chickens outside a gas station at the intersection of Kansas Avenue and Seventh Street.
Quintana said his grandfather and father, Jose Quintana and Cesar Quintana, started the restaurant with a recipe from his family’s hometown of Parral, Chihuahua, though the dish is known for being from the nearby state Sinaloa. They swapped the charcoal out for wood and kept the menu simple.
“They just wanted to do one thing and do it right,” Quintana said.
Whole chickens roasting on a wood-fired grill at El Pollo Rey, on Tuesday, August 18, 2026, in Kansas City. The Kansas City, Kansas staple was recently named to The New York Times list of the 41 greatest Mexican restaurants in the country. Dominick Williams dowilliams@kcstar.com
It gets even more straight-forward than that.
Guests have three options to choose from: a whole bird for $26.50, a half bird for $13.25 or eight chicken wings for $11.
Each order of the smoked bird comes with the charro beans, rice and a fresh, puréed salsa in styrofoam cups, pickled onions in a bag and tortillas from neighboring Carniceria y Tortilleria San Antonio.
The bird comes on a paper plate, featuring a mix of white and dark meat with charred, crispy skin. How one’s meal is eaten is up to each diner, but Quintana and the cooks in the kitchen eat it like a taco, putting chunks of the meat, a spoonful of rice and salsa and a helping of the onions into a tortilla.
Tortillas rest on roasted chicken at El Pollo Rey, on Tuesday, August 18, 2026, in Kansas City. The Kansas City, Kansas staple was recently named to The New York Times list of the 41 greatest Mexican restaurants in the country. Dominick Williams dowilliams@kcstar.com 
El Pollo Rey, on Tuesday, August 18, 2026, in Kansas City. The Kansas City, Kansas staple was recently named to The New York Times list of the 41 greatest Mexican restaurants in the country. Dominick Williams dowilliams@kcstar.com
In a dining room of less than a dozen late lunch guests, there are numerous eating techniques happening here. Some keep it simple with chicken and salsa in a tortilla, while others pile high into the corn tortilla a little bit of everything on the table (even the slightly soupy beans). It’s even acceptable to eat the chicken on its own or tear up the tortilla to use as a scoop.
“At the end of the day, it’s however you want to eat it,” Quintana said.
If you’re going to specialize in one dish, it goes without saying that it must be executed well each and every time. And when that dish is chicken, the sin here is serving a dry bird.
The kitchen staff at El Pollo Rey, who cook more than 400 spatchcocked chickens a day, make sure that doesn’t happen. There’s heat to be found in bites with salsa, dabs of hot sauce and, to a lesser degree, the seasoning of the chicken. But the chicken on its own comes tender, juicy, and without a doubt smoky. According to Quintana, they only use salt and pepper to season these birds, but he said the wood does a lot of work in terms of the flavor.
Whole chickens roasting on a wood-fired grill at El Pollo Rey, on Tuesday, August 18, 2026, in Kansas City. The Kansas City, Kansas staple was recently named to The New York Times list of the 41 greatest Mexican restaurants in the country. Dominick Williams dowilliams@kcstar.com
The wings, doused in Buffalo sauce and wrapped in tin foil, also come with tortillas. It’s an addition that made it to the menu around the time the restaurant moved to its current location in 2011, an offering that fed guests if the wait was too long for the other chicken.
They may not be part of the original menu, but the wings aren’t to be skipped. The tangy, slightly spicy buffalo sauce is made in house, and they’re as regarded by local diners as anything else on the menu — which, again, is just chicken.
But don’t expect any more menu fine-tuning. The restaurant has survived mostly by word-of-mouth, Quintana said, quite a feat in today’s restaurant landscape, and its simplicity is a stand-out feature among Kansas Citians. They’re normally busy, especially during lunch hours, though the kitchen team said business has picked up due to the New York Times shoutout.
The recognition, Quintana said, is an achievement for this long-standing, family-run business. It’s still in the Quintana family, run by his father and uncles, Jose Quintana and Evodio Molina.
“We’re definitely humbled,” Quintana said.
El Pollo Rey is open daily, with hours of 10 a.m. to 7 p.m. Monday through Saturday and 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. on Sunday.
Employees prepare chicken plates at El Pollo Rey, on Tuesday, August 18, 2026, in Kansas City. The Kansas City, Kansas staple was recently named to The New York Times list of the 41 greatest Mexican restaurants in the country. Dominick Williams dowilliams@kcstar.com 
Whole roasted chicken is chopped at El Pollo Rey, on Tuesday, August 18, 2026, in Kansas City. The Kansas City, Kansas staple was recently named to The New York Times list of the 41 greatest Mexican restaurants in the country. Dominick Williams dowilliams@kcstar.com
This story was originally published August 19, 2026 at 11:01 AM.
Katelyn Umholtz
The Kansas City Star
Katelyn Umholtz is The Star’s Food Insider and covers Kansas City’s restaurant scene and food and beverage news. She comes to Kansas City from Boston, where she was an award-winning food and restaurant reporter for Boston.com and the Boston Globe Media Partners. She has worked in newsrooms across the country for nearly a decade as an education journalist, breaking news reporter and editor. Katelyn is a graduate of the University of Georgia, where she studied journalism.
Dining and Cooking