Ruin’s Pub

Ruin’s Pub, located at 1715 Main in Kansas City is a Hungarian food themed bar and pub serving lunch and dinner. There’s having seating for about one hundred including a VW van that looks like six could fit in and grab a bite.  This eclectic stop with flying horses, graffiti painted walls that they actually had a painting party to work on. The mismatched tables painted with street art and other one of kind drawings can lure you in to see what is going on inside.

Besides a full service bar the big point of interest for me started with the self-serve tap bar. There are forty computer screened taps displaying which magically elixir you can try once you get a temporary card. The taps are rotated frequently so you have to keep an eye on them, there might be a better choice the next time you come and visit.

Although this is a Hungarian themed menu I grabbed some fish and chips for lunch. Their version was served with half a grilled lemon to squeeze if you please on three nice portions of cod. The cod was sitting on a bed of thin cut fries in a newspaper style basket which was a good touch. This made me think of a baskets from the Boston Bay or Pier 39 in San Francisco.

Ruins serves three wonderful types of Hungarian Langos, a fried flatbread with goodies on top.  There’s a Gylai Langos consisting of Feta sauce, which is yogurt with feta cheese, olive oil, salt, cayenne, mint garlic and lemon juice, pork and roasted sweet peppers. Lastly the Tzatziki Langos with baby tomatoes, cucumber, shaved red onion and feta cheese.

Two of the appetizers are new to me that you might find new and to your liking. The Poutine is a type of loaded French fry dish. This particular version has pork belly, cheddar cheese curds melting on top of house fries.  The second app that I gravitated to was the Charcuterie (shahr-koo-tuh-ree). These cured meats, cheeses come with pickled mustard seed, cucumber and grilled crostini, the toasted bread to stack up and enjoy!
Although it is in the soup section of the menu the Hungarian Goulash is a meal alone. Hearty beef, paprika broth on top of egg noodles with a spot of sour cream and toasted crostini. Full of flavor and so rich it will fill you up. There’s another soup that I found very interesting to try, the Chilled Sour Cherry Soup. This a Hungarian soup pinkish red in color normally served with whole cherries and eats more like a desert.

Finally the entrée to go for is the Stroganoff. The version here consists of Guinness-braised beef short rib, smoked crimini mushrooms, white onions, short rib jus, house crema and egg noodles. Go to their site at www.ruinspubkc.com and view the videos, original art pictures as well as the social links to check the events and beers coming to the magical taps!