This is the second in a three-part series. Read part one here.
Inside the colorful Mexican mercados, carnicerias, taquerias, cafes, panaderias and paleterias accenting Independence Avenue, Spanish is the first language for most shop owners and their customers.
The Historic Northeast is home to one of the largest and fastest-growing Hispanic populations in Kansas City, and the ability to communicate with international tourists from Mexico, Argentina, and Central and South America during the FIFA World Cup playoffs this summer may prove to be the community’s most valuable hidden asset.
“We will do everything we can to understand them,” said Antonio Garcia, the 21-year-old manager of Frutopia, who speaks not only fluent Spanish, but also English and conversational Arabic.
The Mexican paleteria, ice cream shop, and grill located at 3737 Independence Ave. is a popular place to grab a snack. The homegrown brand has three locations in the metro, but the Independence Avenue location is the largest.
On a recent weekday afternoon, 7-year-old Yazmine Guerrero of St. Joseph, Missouri, was enjoying a bubblegum ice cream waffle cone with childish abandon, but the line of customers was mostly Spanish-speaking adults hankering for a late lunch or snack.
Only about five weeks before an estimated 650,000 fútbol fans arrive in Kansas City, Garcia is bracing for increased foot traffic and a surge in both delivery and catering orders.
Frutopia’s menu features about 40 ice cream flavors at any one time, including tropical flavors like avocado, coconut and guava. There are popsicles, sundaes and street foods.
Garcia’s favorite is the mangonada: scoops of mango sorbet and diced mango drizzled with house-made tamarind sauce and sprinkled with tajin, a pepper seasoning blend, and chamoy, a sweet, salty, sour and spicy seasoning paste that tingles on the tip of the tongue.
The chain also keeps a keen eye out for confectionery trends such as Dubai chocolate, a combination of milk chocolate with a filling of pistachio and crunchy kaitifi, and “viral fruit,” an Asian ice cream pastry that looks like actual pieces of fruit but contains a wafer-thin layer of cake covering an ice cream interior.
The menu also includes popular snack foods like churros, street corn, and dorilocos, snack chips loaded with toppings such as cucumber and jicama, Japanese peanuts, chamoy, hot sauce and lime juice.
“I mean, this just has everything under one roof… if they want salty, (or) they want sugar, I think we have it right here,” Garcia said.
Independence Avenue stretches eastward from The Paseo to Ewing Avenue and on to GEHA Field at Arrowhead Stadium, making it an easy neighborhood for visitors to access from downtown Kansas City.
To highlight the diverse array of immigrant and refugee-owned businesses, the Northeast Kansas City Chamber of Commerce created the International Marketplace.
Content includes self-guided tours highlighting food, landmarks, hiking and murals, including “Soccer Around the Globe,” which is painted on the side of Charritos Plaza Taqueria at 3831 Independence Ave.
Children growing up in the Historic Northeast have been playing soccer for generations and cheering on players like the Mexican national team’s Javier “Chicharito” Hernández, who is the country’s leading scorer with a record 52 goals.
For several decades, Rebecca Koop has been a champion of the Historic Northeast. She lives in the community, owns Back Door Pottery, and is a part-time event coordinator for the NEKC.
Koop, who was honored with an Urban Hero award by the Downtown Council of Kansas City in 2024, worries the businesses along Independence Avenue might not share in the economic impact of hosting the World Cup.
“I think we’re going to get an influx of people from surrounding states that are soccer fans. A whole bunch of people from Iowa and Nebraska. I think we’re going to get Americans coming more than foreign nationals,” she said over a platter of enchiladas with mole during a recent lunch at Taqueria Mexico #2, a family-run operation with several locations.
“Will people actually come early, get a place to stay, travel and make it a whole vacation, not just coming for a game?
Will they travel and make the whole point soccer?” she said. “Yes, if they’re here for two or three weeks, then they might actually get over to the Northeast, but if that’s not the case, I don’t think we’re going to see them at all.”
Daniel Yuman is planning to offer menu specials and host lots of watch parties.
A soft-spoken and personable 21-year-old who grew up in the Kansas suburbs, Yuman manages the Taqueria Mexico location at 5920 Independence Ave.
The dining room is accented with the bright patterns of Talavera porcelain tiles and dotted with velvet sombreros, plus a large-group seating area and nine big-screen TVs well suited to eating, drinking and watching soccer matches.
Diners start their meal with the famously thin chips.
For those who don’t speak Spanish or English, the breakfast, lunch, and dinner menus feature photos of tacos, burritos, enchiladas, fajitas, chimichangas, and molcajetes, a volcanic rock mortar that is filled with chicken, steak, or seafood served with rice and charro beans. There’s also a kids’ menu.
“The chamber is definitely very helpful not only to us but to every single business here in the community, and they really know how to bring up the community to different areas. They’ll make sure that your place is seen,” Yuman said.
Of course, not all attention is positive.
Last fall, Yuman gave an interview to the Spanish-language TV Telemundo about needing help with dispersing unhoused encampments behind the restaurant.
“Safety was a big issue here,” said Rol Diing, a 26-year resident of the Historic Northeast from South Sudan and the NEKC’s ambassador of business communications. “You could not walk with your purse during the day, but now you can walk here in the nighttime and the daytime.”
Yuman’s pitch to fútebol fans looking for an authentic Kansas City experience is straightforward.
“If you decide to come here, you’re gonna get some of the best Mexican food either here or in Mexico,” Yuman said. “And you’ll get the atmosphere: We try to shoot for hospitality and taking care of people, because in the end we will always be a family restaurant.”
This article was originally published in Flatland, a fellow member of the KC Media Collective.
