Updated on 5/15: Since publication, Frankie Pickles has stopped its pop-up in Prairie Village. A Facebook post from the owners this week announced the closure and thanked customers for their early support.
It’s only been a couple of months since Scratch Gourmet Kitchen moved out of their Prairie Village space and into a new one a few doors down.
The space didn’t stay quiet for long. On Friday night, the dining room of Frankie Pickles Tackle Box Tavern & Fish House bustled with customers, sipping cocktails and digging into Southern-style seafood dishes.
Inside the kitchen, chef and co-owner Brandon West whipped up and carefully plated those dishes. The Prairie Village weekend pop-up concept is a culmination of his years in Kansas City’s restaurant scene, and an ode to what he calls “real American cuisine.”
West and his partner, Sheena Nicholls, opened their new restaurant at the beginning of the month.
Frankie Pickles opened at 3939 W. 69th Terrace
- The restaurant operates on the south side of the Shops of Prairie Village, just off 71st Street and Tomahawk Road.
- Scratch occupied that space for about six years before relocating to their new space earlier this year.
- Frankie Pickles is open from 11 a.m. to 9 p.m. Friday and Saturday.
Frankie Pickles serves Southern-style seafood dishes
The menu at Frankie Pickles focuses on “forward-thinking seafood” rooted in Southern flavors.
For dinner, dishes like cheddar chive lobster rolls, catfish and grits, Cajun bloody mary oysters, and jerk-marinated red snapper are served.
At lunchtime, customers can expect items like soft shell crab po-boys, shrimp boils and fried fish baskets.
“We (wanted to) try to do something that we believe in, and we think is thoughtful and creative and different, and (lets us) express ourselves and take that chance,” West said.
The restaurant’s name is a nod to West and Nicholls’ 10-month-old daughter, Frankie, whose nickname is also “Pickle”.
Frankie Pickles is a long time coming for its owners
Though Frankie Pickles is West’s first restaurant concept all his own, he’s not new to the restaurant business.
He previously co-founded local catering company Kravin’ It KC, and he also helped open Lula Southern Cookhouse in Kansas City, Missouri.
“This is kind of my opportunity to keep that Southern feel going,” West said.
He and Nicholls said they’ve long discussed branching out with a concept all their own. For years, as their family grew, that idea stayed in the realm of “spitballing and dreaming.”
The turning point came, they said, when the owners of Scratch in Prairie Village reached out with an opportunity to launch a weekend concept in their former space (which, up to now, had been reserved for private events after Scratch moved out).
Behind the scenes, the couple said, they’ve received lots of support from the local restaurant community. Cooks and front-of-house staff West has worked with in the past have even volunteered their time to help get the concept off the ground.
“People have just rallied around us to make this happen for him,” Nicholls said. “It’s been really amazing to just watch people line up to be helpful.”
In its current pop-up iteration, Frankie Pickles will remain open on weekends through July. Beyond the summer, West and Nicholls said making the concept permanent isn’t out of the question — though there isn’t currently anything set in stone for that, either in terms of timeline or location.
For now, the couple is focused on early response to their new venture, which they said has thus far been encouraging.
In its first two weeks open, West said, plates have come back to the kitchen cleared completely of the seafood dishes that they went out to the dining room with; not a morsel left.
“We couldn’t be more ecstatic,” West said. “You can tell that we’re doing something special, and people are believing in it.”
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