La Costa Mexicana, on the Liberty Square since 2015.
Liberty, Missouri · since 2015
There are about a hundred and ten dishes on the printed menu and most of them are simply put down in front of you. These six are not. Two of them are worth ordering purely because the table next to yours will look.
Al pastor, steak, shrimp, bacon and grilled pineapple with melted cheese, and then the server sets it alight with tequila beside the table. It is the loudest thing in the building and it is also, at twenty six ninety nine, tied for the most expensive.
Cooked with peppers and onions. Rice, beans, guacamole, sour cream, pico, corn or flour tortillas
26.99
The cast iron comes out still spitting, on a wooden board, and you hear it before you see it. Grilled chicken or grilled steak at eighteen ninety nine is the version most tables order. Seafood, pineapple, mixed and shrimp all sit above it.
Wednesday, chicken or steak fajitas are 14.99 all night
18.99
Four corn quesa tacos of birria style beef with Monterey cheese, cilantro and onions, and a bowl of consome that arrives with them. The bowl is the point. Dip the taco, eat it while it is still dripping, repeat until the bowl is empty.
Also as a cheese crust burrito, 16.99, with the consome on the side
15.99
One chicken enchilada under green sauce, one beef enchilada under white spinach cheese, and one chile relleno under ranchero. Green, white and red, laid out in that order, served with rice. It arrives looking like the flag it is named after.
Three sauces on one plate, which is the shortest way to taste the kitchen
15.99
Beef nachos, two mini chimis with jalapeno cream cheese, a shrimp quesadilla and two mini chicken flautas, with cabbage, sour cream, pico and guacamole. It is an appetiser on paper. In practice it lands in the middle of the table and everybody stops talking.
Twelve ninety nine, and it will feed four people who have already had chips
12.99
Cinnamon and brown sugar ice cream in a crunchy coating, deep fried, then covered in whipped cream, chocolate, honey and sprinkles with a cherry on the top. Five ninety nine. Order one for the table and watch how quickly that stops being the plan.
Churro bites, xangos and sopapillas are 5.50. Flan is 4.99
5.99
The place itself
Donis opened La Costa in an eighteen eighties brick storefront on East Kansas Street, and to this day people describe the restaurant by the building before they describe the food. There is exposed brick, there are wooden tables, and there is enough room for a large party to turn up without calling ahead.
What the kitchen is known for, in their own order, is the margaritas and fresh authentic Mexican food, and being greeted properly on the way in. William Jewell is a two minute walk up the hill, which is why the dining room fills at noon and again at six.