Colby & Megan Garrelts

Colby and Megan Garrelts are the husband-and-wife chef team behind Kansas City’s Bluestem and Rye. Colby won the James Beard Award for Best Chef: Midwest in 2013, and Megan, a pastry chef, has been a repeated Beard semifinalist for her pastry work.

Biography

The Garreltses opened Bluestem in Kansas City’s Westport neighborhood (900 Westport Road) in 2004; Colby had earlier been named a Food & Wine Best New Chef in 2005.¹ After roughly seven James Beard nominations, he won Best Chef: Midwest in 2013.² Megan Garrelts has earned multiple Outstanding Pastry Chef semifinalist nods for her work at Bluestem and later at Rye.³

After closing Bluestem, the couple focused on Rye, their Midwestern comfort-food restaurant, which grew to two locations — Rye Leawood at Mission Farms (opened 2012, Johnson County) and Rye Plaza on the Country Club Plaza (opened 2017); both remain open.⁴ Together they also co-authored the cookbooks Bluestem: The Cookbook (with Bonjwing Lee) and Made in America.⁵

Legacy

The Garreltses are among the chefs who earned Kansas City sustained national culinary recognition, pairing fine-dining ambition (Bluestem) with an embrace of regional comfort cooking (Rye).

See also

• rye

Sources

Footnotes

1. “Colby Garrelts named the James Beard Awards’ Best Chef: Midwest,” The Pitch — Bluestem in Westport (900 Westport Rd); 2005 Food & Wine Best New Chef. ↩

2. “After 7 Nominations, Local Chef Wins Award,” KCUR (2013-05-09) — Colby Garrelts won James Beard Best Chef: Midwest, 2013. ↩

3. “Kansas City’s James Beard Award Restaurants and Bars,” Visit KC; Feast Magazine — Megan Garrelts multi-time Outstanding Pastry Chef semifinalist (Bluestem and Rye). ↩

4. Feast Magazine; Johnson County Post — Rye Leawood (Mission Farms, 2012) and Rye Plaza (Country Club Plaza, 2017), both open. ↩

5. Andrews McMeel / Simon & Schuster — Bluestem: The Cookbook (Colby Garrelts, Megan Garrelts, Bonjwing Lee) and Made in America: A Modern Collection of Classic Recipes. ↩