Authentic British Street Food in Kansas City: Your Complete Guide
British pies, sausage rolls and pasties, made in Kansas City. Where to collect them, how to cook them, and why they arrive frozen.
Chris Thomas ·
There’s something honest about British street food. It was never designed to impress anyone — it was designed to feed people who’d been working, using what was to hand, in a form you could eat standing up. Pies, pasties, sausage rolls. No cutlery, no plate, no fuss.
We make that food in Kansas City, and this is everything you need to know about getting hold of it.
What British street food actually is
It goes back a long way. Vendors sold hot pies on London streets centuries before anyone used the phrase “street food” — cheap, filling, portable, and made to be eaten with your hands on the way to somewhere else.
The pie is the centre of it. Not a dessert, despite what the word suggests to most Americans, but a proper meal: meat and gravy under a lid, sized so one is lunch. The pasty did the same job for Cornish tin miners, with a thick crimped edge you could hold with dirty hands and throw away. Sausage rolls turned up wherever people needed something to eat quickly and cheaply.
What all of it shares is that the format came from the constraint. That’s why it still works.
What we make
Everything is made from scratch in our kitchen in North Kansas City, then flash-frozen. That last part matters, and it’s the thing most people ask about — so it’s worth explaining properly further down.
The pies
Ours are mash-topped rather than pastry-topped — a cheesy mashed potato lid instead of a crust. That’s a genuine British tradition rather than a shortcut, and it’s worth an article of its own.
- Steak, Ale & Mushroom — beef slow-braised in dark ale with mushrooms
- Shepherd’s Pie — lamb and beef, peas, carrots and sweetcorn. The ratio is deliberate and we’ve written about why
- Cheddar, Ale & Chicken — chicken thigh with sharp English cheddar and IPA
- Birria — slow-braised beef with cilantro-lime mash. A Kansas City idea, not a British one
- Philly Cheese Steak — steak, onions and peppers under a cheesy top
- Brisket & Bean — twelve-hour brisket with British-style beans
Sold in packs of 4, 8 and 12.
Sausage rolls
Pork sausage meat in butter puff pastry, in traditional and spicy. Butter matters here — it’s why the pastry shatters and leaves crumbs down your front, which is how you know it’s the real thing.
Also in packs of 4, 8 and 12.
Pasties
Steak & Ale, Cheddar & Chicken, Birria, Shepherd’s Pie and Philly Cheese Steak, hand-crimped along one edge. These are market-only — you’ll find them when we’re out at a farmers market rather than in the online shop.
Bundles
If you can’t choose, the Union Jack Sampler is four pies and two sausage rolls, and the Full Monty is twelve pies across the range. Both on the shop.
Why everything is frozen
This is the bit that surprises people, so let’s be direct about it.
We’re not a restaurant. There’s no counter where you buy a hot pie and eat it standing up — that’s how we started, and it’s still how we operate at markets, but it isn’t the business now.
What we do now is make proper British food, freeze it at its best, and get it to you so you can cook it when you want it. A pie out of your own oven forty minutes after you decided you wanted one is better than a pie that’s been sitting under a heat lamp. The freezing isn’t a compromise on the food; it’s what lets the food be good at the moment you eat it.
It also means you can keep six in the freezer and stop thinking about dinner on a Tuesday.
How to cook them
From frozen. Don’t thaw — it makes the base soggy before it ever sees heat.
- Pies: 400°F for 45–50 minutes, until golden on top
- Sausage rolls and pasties: 400°F for 25–35 minutes
Both want an internal temperature of 165°F or above. There’s a fuller guide here including what an air fryer does differently and why the microwave is not an option.
Getting hold of it in Kansas City
We deliver to eight collection points across the metro. You order online, choose where to collect, and we drop it there.
Thursdays — Border Brewing in the Crossroads, Browne’s Irish Marketplace, Stockyards Brewing in Overland Park, Friction Beer Co in Shawnee, ExBEERiment in Gardner, and RockCreek in Mission.
Saturdays — BRITS in Lawrence, dropped the Friday before.
Monday to Wednesday, by appointment — our kitchen in North Kansas City, which is where Chris cooks, so it’s flexible.
Order by the Wednesday and you’ll have it that week. Order Thursday or later and it rolls to the following week. Full details and a map are on the pick up locations page.
You’ll also find us at the Overland Park and Lenexa farmers markets and at pop-ups around the metro — the calendar has everything that’s coming up.
Getting hold of it anywhere else
This is the part people miss: we ship to all fifty states.
Packed frozen, sent FedEx Priority Overnight, $25 flat rate. Orders go out Monday to Thursday so nothing sits in a depot over a weekend, and it arrives still solid with cooking instructions in the box.
If you’re a British expat in Denver or Atlanta or anywhere else wondering where to get a proper pie — this is where. You don’t need to be in Kansas City.
British food and Kansas City beer
Six of our eight collection points are breweries, which is not an accident. Pie and a pint is the oldest pairing in British food, and Kansas City happens to be very good at beer.
A few that work particularly well:
- Steak, Ale & Mushroom with an English brown ale — the dark ale in the pie builds the bridge
- Shepherd’s Pie with an Irish red — caramel malt against the lamb, and it cuts the richness of the cheese
- Cheddar, Ale & Chicken with an IPA — there’s already IPA in the pie, so lean into it
- Birria with a Mexican-style lager — clean and cold against the spice
- Traditional sausage roll with a bitter or ESB — the classic pub pairing, and still the right answer
Collect on a Thursday and you can have both in one trip.
Who’s behind it
Chris Thomas grew up in Leeds and came to the States on a soccer scholarship in 2007. He started cooking in college to save money, working from what his mum used to make. After a career setback during the pandemic he started making pies properly, and Brit Boy opened in March 2025.
The full story is here, and if you want the strangest chapter of it — the summer England based their World Cup camp in Kansas City and Brit Boy ended up feeding the press room — that’s here.
Where to start
If you’ve never had a proper British pie, the Union Jack Sampler is the honest answer: four pies and two sausage rolls, and you’ll know within a week which one you’ll be ordering by the dozen.
If you already know what you want, the shop has everything in packs of 4, 8 and 12.
And if you’re feeding a crowd, catering is a different conversation — Chris will build something around what you need, including vegetarian options that aren’t an afterthought.
Questions about anything — an allergy, a delivery date, whether we can get to you — ring Chris on (913) 940-3261 or email hello@britboystreetfood.com. He’d rather hear from you than have you guess.