Buck Tui BBQ

Buck Tui BBQ is a Thai-KC BBQ fusion restaurant in Overland Park run by Kansas City native Ted Liberda and his wife Pam — the same team behind Waldo Thai — merging low-and-slow Kansas City pitmaster tradition with the bold flavors of Northeastern Thai cuisine that Ted grew up eating at his Thai mother’s table.¹

Description

Buck Tui BBQ answers the question: what happens when Kansas City barbecue goes to Thailand? The concept fuses pitmaster low-and-slow technique with the herbs, spices, and heat of Northeastern Thai cooking — brisket kissed with curry, ribs glazed with sweet chili, tiger cry sauce alongside smoked meats. The result is a cuisine that feels entirely original yet deeply rooted in two distinct culinary traditions, both of which Ted Liberda was raised on simultaneously.¹

The restaurant occupies the former Plowboys Barbeque site at 75th and Metcalf, a fitting handoff in Overland Park’s BBQ lineage. Signature items include brisket rolls (shredded brisket with cream cheese and scallions in rice paper, served with sweet and sour sauce), Issan Thai sausage, smoked mackerel, and full barbecue platters with jasmine rice and house pickles. The bar program — led by beverage director Mari Matsumoto — is considered a key part of the experience.²

Pam Liberda, the executive chef who drove Waldo Thai to national attention, earned the 2021 Feast Magazine Chef of the Year, 2022 Best Chef Kansas City from The Pitch, and a 2023 James Beard Award semifinalist nomination for Best Chef: Midwest. Buck Tui represents the couple’s most personal project — a restaurant built on Ted’s literal childhood nickname and his family’s bicultural culinary inheritance.¹

Ownership and history

Ted Liberda is a Kansas City native whose Thai mother, Ann Liberda, emigrated from Thailand in 1975 and opened Thai Place in Overland Park — one of the metro’s early Thai restaurants. She later became chef at Thai Diner in Lawrence. Ted learned barbecue from his American father and Thai cooking from his mother’s kitchen, an education he describes as building for twenty years before Buck Tui.²

Ted attended the Florida Culinary Institute before returning to Kansas City and logging thirty years in the city’s restaurant industry. In 2018 he and Pam co-opened Waldo Thai in the Waldo neighborhood of Kansas City, MO, where Pam’s cooking earned James Beard notice. During the 2020 shutdown, Ted founded BBQ for Hope, a nonprofit providing meals to underserved communities.¹

Buck Tui launched as a pop-up at the Overland Park Farmers Market in spring/summer 2021, building an audience before opening the permanent 75th Street brick-and-mortar in February 2022 — taking over the space after Plowboys Barbeque closed.²

Links

• bucktuibbq.com
• Yelp listing

Sources

Disputes

None at this time.

Footnotes

1. https://www.bucktuibbq.com/ourstory/ — Buck Tui BBQ official site. Asserts: owners Ted and Pam Liberda, Thai-KC BBQ concept, mother Ann Liberda’s immigration, family culinary heritage, Pam’s awards. ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴

2. https://johnsoncountypost.com/2022/01/10/buck-tui-bbq-overland-park-139376/ — Johnson County Post. Asserts: February 2022 opening at 6737 W 75th St (former Plowboys site); pop-up origins at OP Farmers Market 2021; Ted’s 30-year KC restaurant career; menu highlights. ↩ ↩² ↩³