Wild Child

Shawnee, Kansas

Top 10 nominee for Best New U.S. Cocktail Bar at the 2024 Spirited Awards.

Wild Child opened on Johnson Drive in downtown Shawnee in the summer of 2023, on the Kansas side of Kansas City and a few doors from Drastic Measures, and it built its name on treating the zero proof half of the list as seriously as the full proof half. The team strips the alcohol out of popular spirits in house so that familiar recipes and flavors stay within reach of anyone who has stopped drinking, and those pours sit on the menu beside the cocktails rather than beneath them. Wine, a Tuesday flight night and a room of warm wood paneling and better than fifty plants round it out. Reservations and private parties are booked through the site.