On a bright, early spring morning in Kansas City’s Northland, Aaron Beeman pulls up to In-A-Tub on a vintage motorcycle, wearing a leather jacket with the name of his restaurant embroidered on the back.
With its rounded glass windows and bright orange bubble letters, the fast food joint at 4000 North Oak Trafficway sticks out on an otherwise nondescript suburban thoroughfare.
Beeman walks through the compact kitchen, where an employee carefully dunks crispy hard shell tacos into a bath of piping hot frying oil, and country music plays over the loudspeakers.
In front of an LED sign that reads “Tacos, Pocket Burgers, Sides,” he points to a black-and-white photograph of an old school drive-thru hanging on the wall.
“That’s a picture of the original In-A-Tub, and that opened in 1951. There was two owners, but the second owner was Marion Carpenter,” Beeman recounts . “She developed, I think, the bulk of the food.”
In-A-Tub, lovingly referred to as “the Tub” by locals, got its unusual name from its early days when it was known for serving 50 different flavors of ice cream.
“It was served in a tub, not on a cone, not on whatever,” he explains.
There were once dozens of In-A-Tubs all over the region, potentially even as far out as Hastings, Nebraska. Now, there are only two locations remaining, the second in Platte Woods.
Decades ago, the local franchise gained a reputation for its unique take on the taco, Kansas City-style.
“They take that taco and they put lightly seasoned ground beef inside of it, and then they would clip it, and they would deep fry it,” says Andrea Broomfield, a local food historian and author of the book “Iconic Restaurants of Kansas City.”
Broomfield says the Kansas City taco, which can also be found at local institutions such as Manny’s Mexican Restaurant, is pried open and topped with lettuce, tomatoey salsa and, traditionally, Parmesan cheese.
How Parmesan cheese ended up on a taco in the first place goes back to the city’s meatpacking days of the early 20th century, when Mexican and Italian immigrants worked alongside each other in the West Bottom’s stockyards.
“Italians came to Kansas City and they refused to give up their food ways,” says Broomfield. “That Parmesan cheese that they were making is what these Mexican immigrants decided to use on their tacos, because it was convenient and it tasted good.”
Broomfield figures the early owners of In-A-Tub saw the popularity of the local delicacy and figured they would put a version of the fried taco on their menu. Except instead of Parmesan, In-A-Tub used a neon orange powdered cheese, which is still used today.
“How they came up with that idea, I don't know — that's distinctive,” says Broomfield.
Beeman likens the taco cheese to the flavor of Kansas City’s Topsy’s popcorn. John Tovar, an employee at In-A-Tub, describes it as a very close mix of Doritos dust and boxed mac and cheese powder.
“It's definitely not like the average powdered cheese that you see,” says Tovar. “You know, it's actually kind of like a secret recipe… There’s really nowhere else that’s like this place, you know.”
Broomfield, who grew up down the street from In-A-Tub, points out that the cheese isn’t for everyone.
“A lot of people who come to In-A-Tub as an adult don't like it. It's not necessarily easy to love what, by appearances, looks like a greasy taco with fake powdered cheese on top,” she says.
For decades, In-A-Tub was the place for kids from rival high schools to put aside their differences and break bread over fried tacos.
“In-A-Tub was neutral territory, so you know, you weren't talking trash with other schools or anything like that,” says Alyson Brown. “I mean, you could be rich, you could be poor. It didn't matter, because the Tub is just the ultimate dive, and the food was great, but inexpensive.”
Brown, a graduate of Winnetonka High School in the Northland, lives out of state now.
But she still reminisces about her childhood spent at the Tub, which was the first place she brought her husband when she showed him around her hometown for the first time.
“And I mean, he's a born and raised Dallas guy, I wasn't sure what he was going to think of it, and he's like, ‘Oh, my God, this place is amazing,’” recalls Brown. “So even non-Kansas Citians can fall in love with the Tub.”
