Drum Room Entertainment

Enjoy live jazz every Friday and Saturday evening at the Drum Room.

Members Card
Register for our free Members Card and begin earning points and discounts for each visit to the Drum Room.

:: Learn More ::

news And Articles

Voted Best Steak - Bone-in Kansas City Strip at the Drum Room
The Pitch, 2010
When young chef Eric Carter took over the kitchen of the Drum Room at the renovated President Hotel, he knew steaks would be an important part of his dinner menu. "Most of our hotel guests are out-of-towners, and they want a real Kansas City steak," he says. This town no longer has stockyards, so Carter imports organic beef from nearby Kansas farms, where the cattle have been raised on a hormone- and antibiotic-free diet. His 20-ounce bone-in strip is tender and juicy, grilled to order, slathered with caramelized cippolini onions, and sided with whipped spuds. As a bonus, this is a competitively priced steak. "We have a lot of high-end steakhouses around here," Carter says. "We want to give our customers what they want."

Voted Best Manhattan - The Drum Room
The Pitch, 2010
As much as we love to see bartenders recognized as the artists that they are, we shouldn't forget that the true measure of a bar is how well it masters the classics. Nowhere is this more evident than at the Drum Room, located in downtown's Hilton President Hotel. Whiskey, sweet vermouth and a dash of bitters shouldn't be hard to screw up, but you'd be surprised how many bars serve a flat, overly simple variation of the Manhattan that, when done right, is as robust and complex as the Drum Room's. And don't worry about looking like a Mad Men wannabe when you order it with rye. It's how God intended it.

A Stripped-Down Menu Rocks the Drum Room
In the heyday of the nightclub called the Drum Room (this would have been in the 1940s and '50s), that's how the owners of the hotel described the swanky space, which had a drum-shaped bar up near the street-level entrance. (Read Article)

Drum Room's Eric Carter Marches To His Own Beat
Carter has completely changed the menu at the restaurant, which now serves lunch and dinner; the old lunch venue, the second-floor Walnut Room, is currently a breakfast-only dining room. The Drum Room still offers live entertainment in the lounge on Friday and Saturday night, but the dining room attracts a mixed audience: "I thought the clientele might be younger, since the hotel is so close to the Power & Light District," said Carter. "But the President Hotel really attracts a diverse clientele, often depending on the conventions that are in town." (Read Article)

Glenn Beck and Miley Cyrus, Your Drum Room Table is Ready
The Drum Room, in the historic President Hotel, is the subject of this week's Cafe review in The Pitch. Back in the 1940s and '50s, when downtown Kansas City was an entertainment mecca -- movie palaces! Nightclubs! Burlesque! -- the Drum Room called itself a BaRestaurant and operated as a supper club. Patrons could dine, dance or just listen to the featured musical acts in the main dining room. (Read Article)

Restaurant week lunch at The Drum Room
The steakhouse sandwich was the standout of our lunch -- thinly sliced sirloin with red onions, whole grain dijon, beemster cheese on a stirato roll. It was like a decadent dessert -- I wanted to stop eating, but couldn't. (Read Article)