This profile is in active compilation — some details are awaiting a cited source.

Hillsiders — trading first-party as Hillsiders Neighborhood Bar — is a bar at 403 N 5th St in Strawberry Hill, Kansas City, Kansas. It reopened in October 2022 after an eleven-month renovation of a building that had stood vacant for a decade. It runs live bands, DJs, karaoke and trivia, with a back patio and fire pit, and pours both Hamm’s and negronis. Tier 1 — single-location, wholly Wyandotte County. Confirmed operating: own domain live with current hours plus first-party Instagram posts dated August 2026. Ownership is not established by any sourced record and is flagged.1234

Description

Hillsiders sits at 403 N 5th St, a block from breits-stein-and-deli at 412 N 5th and within a few minutes’ walk of fat-matts-vortex and the-easy-inn on N 6th. It is one of the corridor’s newer rooms rather than one of its inherited ones — the building had been empty for about ten years when it was taken on, and the bar reopened in October 2022 after roughly eleven months of renovation.3

The house description on the bar’s own Instagram is simply “Neighborhood Bar in Strawberry Hill.”2 Visit Kansas City, KS placed it in its July 2025 Strawberry Hill dive-bar roundup — spelling the name “Hillsider’s” — as “a nostalgic dive bar with an intimate feel,” and characterised the range of the bar with a single well-chosen pair: “Sip on a negroni or Hamm’s.”4 That is a fair summary of the position it occupies in the corridor: a cocktail programme in a dive-priced room.

Scooter’s Bar Journal, visiting in October 2022 as its 1,577th bar, recorded “a cute dive bar with quirky decor and its own original cocktails,” noting a back patio.3

Live music is the bar’s principal programming. The clearest first-party evidence is structural rather than editorial: the bar publishes a dedicated booking email address, hillsidersbooking@gmail.com, on its own site.1 Directory listings describe live bands, DJs, karaoke, trivia and a patio fire pit; those descriptions are consistent across sources but none of them is first-party, and the fire pit in particular is recorded here as unconfirmed.

Name. The trade name is unsettled in print. The bar’s own domain and Instagram handle are both hillsiderskck and the site’s heading reads Hillsiders Neighborhood Bar; Visit Kansas City, KS renders it Hillsider’s with an apostrophe.124 This page uses Hillsiders and carries the apostrophised form as an alias.

Ownership and history

No owner is named by any source that meets this Registry’s bar.

This is a deliberate absence, not an oversight. Several SEO aggregator pages in this corridor assert a first-name-only owner and supply invented-sounding founding narratives; none carries a byline, a date, or a traceable source, and this page reproduces none of it. The bar’s own website names no owner. No Kansas ABC licensee record, incorporation filing, or bylined news profile naming an owner was located on this pass.

What is documented is the building’s arc. Scooter’s Bar Journal — a first-hand bar-visit log with a contemporaneous October 2022 entry — records that the building had been vacant for a decade and that the bar reopened in October 2022 following an eleven-month renovation, which places the start of work around November 2021.3 The word “reopened” implies an earlier bar use at the address that this pass did not identify.

YearEvent
c. 2012Building at 403 N 5th St falls vacant3
c. Nov 2021Eleven-month renovation begins3
Oct 2022Reopens as Hillsiders; Scooter’s Bar Journal logs it as a “cute dive bar with quirky decor and its own original cocktails”3
2025Listed by Visit Kansas City, KS among Strawberry Hill’s dive bars, as “Hillsider’s” — “sip on a negroni or Hamm’s”4
2026Operating; own domain live; first-party Instagram posts through August12

Last verified: 2026-08-13 · Source: own website — no menu page; priced items recovered from the first-party events calendar · URL: https://hillsiderskck.com/ · Confidence: Medium

Hillsiders publishes no standing drink list and no standing food menu. Its own site is a single-page events calendar with contact details and hours; there is no /menu page and no posted board on either first-party surface.12 What the site does publish is a small number of itemised, priced recurring events, reproduced below. These are the only first-party prices located and they are promotional rather than a full list.

Sunday Service (recurring Sunday brunch service, from 3:00pm)

  • Biscuits & Gravy ($6.00)
  • Irish Coffee ($6.00)
  • Mimosa ($6.00)
  • Bloody Mary ($6.00)

The site lists these as “B&Gs / IRISH COFFEE / MIMOSAS / BLOODY MARY’S — $6.00 EACH.”5

Recurring specials

  • Clayton’s Yeehaw (Tuesdays, from 6:00pm) — $1 off all domestic beers.6

Standing list — not published. Press and tourism sources establish the shape of the offer but no prices: Scooter’s records “its own original cocktails” in 2022, and Visit Kansas City, KS’s 2025 line “sip on a negroni or Hamm’s” captures both ends of the range.34 Aggregator pages publishing a Hillsiders “menu” were not first-party corroborated and are not recorded.

Resolves a prior open question. The “Sunday Service” listing confirms that Hillsiders serves food — biscuits and gravy — on Sundays, which the site’s static pages do not document. Whether a kitchen operates outside that service is still unestablished.

Sources

Footnotes

  1. Hillsiders Neighborhood Bar — official website (accessed 2026-08-13). Asserts: name “Hillsiders Neighborhood Bar”; address 403 N. 5th St., Kansas City, KS; phone (913) 413-0059; hours Monday–Friday 5pm–1:30am and Saturday–Sunday 2pm–1:30am; booking email hillsidersbooking@gmail.com; links to Instagram @hillsiderskck and Facebook /Hillsiderskck. Does not name an owner, give a founding date, publish a menu or prices, or carry a footer copyright year. This is a first-party operating-status signal for this page. ↩ ↩2 ↩3 ↩4 ↩5

  2. Hillsiders — Instagram, @hillsiderskck (accessed 2026-08-13). Asserts: category “Neighborhood Bar”; approximately 10,700 followers; bio “Neighborhood Bar in Strawberry Hill,” 403 N 5th St. Kansas City, Kansas, hours Mon–Fri 5pm–1:30am and Sat–Sun from 2pm; multiple posts dated August 2026 including event announcements, industry-night specials and Sunday brunch promotion. This is the primary operating-status verification for this page. ↩ ↩2 ↩3 ↩4 ↩5

  3. “Hillsiders,” Scooter’s Bar Journal, October 2022 (bar no. 1577) (accessed 2026-08-13). Asserts: address 403 N 5th St, Kansas City, KS 66101; the bar reopened in October 2022 following an eleven-month renovation; the building had been vacant for a decade beforehand; described as “a cute dive bar with quirky decor and its own original cocktails,” with a patio area at the back. Does not name an owner or give prices. Cited as a dated, first-hand visit record rather than as press. ↩ ↩2 ↩3 ↩4 ↩5 ↩6 ↩7 ↩8

  4. “Strawberry Hill Might Just Own the Dive Bar Crown in KC — and It Keeps Getting Better,” Visit Kansas City, KS, July 7, 2025 (accessed 2026-08-13). Asserts: lists “Hillsider’s” (so spelled) among Strawberry Hill’s dive bars as “a nostalgic dive bar with an intimate feel. Sip on a negroni or Hamm’s”; confirms it as currently operating as of July 2025. Note: this article publishes no addresses; the 2023 predecessor in the same series transposes addresses in this corridor and is deliberately not cited. ↩ ↩2 ↩3 ↩4 ↩5

  5. “Sunday Service” — Hillsiders events calendar, own website (accessed 2026-08-13). Asserts: a recurring Sunday service beginning 3:00pm offering “B&Gs / IRISH COFFEE / MIMOSAS / BLOODY MARY’S” at “$6.00 EACH.” Cited as the only first-party priced food-and-drink listing located for this business. ↩

  6. “Clayton’s Yeehaw” — Hillsiders events calendar, own website (accessed 2026-08-13). Asserts: a recurring Tuesday event from 6:00pm with “$1 OFF ALL DOMESTICS.” ↩

See also

Categories

On the record — ks.city/registry/hillsiders-kck · record updated 2026-08-13