John’s Big Deck

Fun place to sit upstairs on the deck on a warm summer day and grab a drink. The food is nothing fancy, fried bar food, and even drinks are your usual rail fare in plastic cups or a couple of drafts, but that’s not what this place is trying to be. Watch a game, hang out with friends in shorts and have a chill Sunday.

I really like this bar. It’s a casual sports bar with a great patio/​deck to chill and watch games. Staff is really friendly and they make a pretty decent steak for $ 14 on Thursdays. Good food. Nice happy hour with always reasonably priced drinks. It’s also really close to my place so that doesn’t hurt. Skip P and L and come here instead!

A fun day on a nice deck. We didn’t order food, but the drinks were cold and the service was good.

Cool deck but not worth the rude and lousy customer service. I recently visited John’s Big Deck while at a bachelorette party. The group had a reservation for the 2^nd floor party room and we were all ordering drinks and food. The waitress and bartender were extremely rude during our visit. The waitress did not give us menus nor take any of our orders. I still can’t figure out why she was there in the first place. We were expected to make all drink and food orders at the bar and then figure out which order was ours as food came out from the kitchen. When we asked to take the party up to the top deck (the one highlight of the bar) the waitress and bartender flipped out! The food was okay, pretty standard bar food. I ordered the burger and it was fine, however my neighbor ordered the wrap and one half was hot and the other half was cold. The deck is cool but not worth the awful service. I would not recommend this bar for a group event unless you skip the party room reservation and just head upstairs.

Great place to catch the game. Friendly staff. Three floors of fun times. The outside area nice and cozy, down stairs a local dive bar. And they serve excellent bar food.

They redid the bathroom and it smells like wood, instead of rank nastiness that kidneys deemed unworthy of blood. + points for sure

The food was good but defiantly nothing special. The staff was curtious, the atmosphere dirty bar-​ish, the drinks were not that cold, but doable.
I feel this is more of a place for college kids to get drunk, have fun, make mistakes, eat something good to soak up the beer, drink some more, and wake up with a hangover and hopefully not a coyote ugly.

Pros: great deck in summer, good burgers and tots, prices are low
Cons: service can be a bit slow, it’s a bit dirty (stairway, bathroom), limited beer options

I love John’s Big Deck! It’s the biggest deck I’ve ever seen! I could just sit on John’s big deck all day long.
Seriously though, I like this bar. Anytime I have out of town visitors I bring them here. It’s not full of 20 somethings the way Power and Light District is and it always seems like each level has a different vibe and one usually suits my mood.

I can’t review this place for the deck because it wasn’t open until 4. We ate lunch here. We really only came for the deck, so that was slightly disappointing. A lot of people walked in wanting to go upstairs, but it was closed. I would think Sundays would be a great day to have the deck open all day. But it wasn’t that big a deal.
We brought a large group of 16 of us here to eat lunch. It wasn’t busy when we showed up, so they were able to accommodate all of us. The place filled up quickly. It’s a rather small place, so had we shown up 30 – 40 minutes later, they probably wouldn’t have been able to accommodate us.
I was a little concerned at first that there was only 1 bartender, working the bar and also serving a 16 top, but he did a fantastic job. Our drinks stayed full. The table was never too cluttered with empty plates. The food came out really quickly. Is it gourmet food? Absolutely not, but what do you expect at a bar? For bar food, it was decent. The fries were bland, but the nachos and the Philly Cheese Steak were pretty good.
If you’re looking for a dive place to grub and have some drinks, this isn’t a bad option. Just don’t expect anything fancy. And if you are looking for a big deck, just make sure you call to see if it’s open first.

Really? What a complete and utter disappointment. We were staying in the Power Light district and drove past this place during the day. We decided to walk over there from the hotel at night.
A cover charge? Seriously? Yeah… methinks not. It is not that impressive to PAY to go there. I am from a BIG city and I do not find the need to PAY to go anywhere. Trust me… I go to cool places. I am sure the door dude thought we were total asshats. Pft… you can keep your big deck John and I think you can figure where I would like you to shove it.
Totally other places way cooler in the town that are… UMMMM FREEEEEEEEEE.
One Halley puppy walks to the front door growls while urinating then walks away with her head held high.

You sign clearly states $ 1 bud lights on Wednesday. Your rooftop bartender says it’s not true and you have never had such special, all while the sign is clearly posted. I still had drinks but false advertising really blows especially when I drove way out of my way to come here. Your atmosphere is cool but not cool enough to be lied to.

My husband and I are new to the area and can appreciate a good dive bar… judging from the reviews this bar sounded divey, but not too rough. As we approached John’s a male patron of the bar was out front pissing on the front of the building in broad daylight. Sorry, but that’s disgusting and I would never go here again if that’s the kind of people who frequent here. Definitely not the place to meet for friends or take your coworkers to.

Taco Tuesday Totally Terrific! Visit this location to enjoy $.50 tacos and happy hour drink specials. A work mate and I decided to have a happy hour work meeting complete with tacos and beer. PBR tallboys and long pours of 2Gingers made the time most enjoyable. I recommend use of the patio this summer. Great little spot in the city.

This bar is loveable without being lovely. I like playing pool here on pint night Mondays when you get to keep the glassware from the chosen beer, but the crowds aren’t filling up the first floor. The food is decent standard bar food for a good price, though I wouldn’t say I often see a lot of people eating here. Usually the tacos bring in a few more patrons.
People rave about the deck. I’m not the biggest fan of that; the fire tables are too large for a good conversation when any background sound is on, there is often someone bumping you trying to get past the overly large chairs on a crowded floor, the deck only gets sun in the morning, and the layout is such that you’re nearly guaranteed slower service. I like those high top tables better for the space. Still though, it’s nice to be outside downtown.
Note that sometimes on Friday or Saturday they will charge a cover for live music you’d probably rather do without. It’s up to you.

If I’m going to pick a bar in KC to meet a group of friends for a drink, this is it.
They have nightly specials on drinks and/​or food. They have arcade games. They have live music on the weekends. They have a rooftop deck. In the winter, the deck is covered so you can still go up there and it’s still a lot of fun although I admit, i tend to hang on the first floor when it’s cold.
This is a classy-​ish dive bar. Not super sketch. But the bathrooms do smell like mold. And the stairs leading up to the second floor and the upper deck are steep, dark, and uneven. There is a door from the street leading straight up the stairs but they generally keep that locked because legend has it that too many people have drunkenly fallen down the stairs right out onto the street (this cannot be confirmed, however).
But, want a cheap beer and to shoot some pool surrounded by the downtown skyline? This is the place. Want to bring a group of your friends somewhere for 75 cent tacos after playing a pick-​up frisbee game on the lawn of the Nelson? Come to John’s. Want to sip a $ 10 cocktail surrounded by beautiful people? Don’t come to John’s. Go to the Rieger. John’s is about as laid back and cool as it gets.

Awesome multi-​story dive bar featuring, that’s right, a BIG DECK!
This place doesn’t look like much from the street, but it was the ‘Big Deck’ part of the name that had me intrigued while I was walking around downtown KC. It was a bit confusing on how to actually get to the deck at first– the front doors open into a bar at ground level. Turns out that once you find the steep and narrow staircase in the corner of that first bar, it leads up to two more: a second-​story dance club-​type bar, and the rooftop deck bar.
The rooftop ‘big deck’ is definitely the sweet spot: lots of outdoor seating, gas-​flame fireplaces, and a great bartender. They have various daily food and drink specials here ($ 3 pints of Tank 7 Farmhouse Ale on the first evening I stopped in guaranteed that I would be back for a return visit), and the atmosphere was possibly the most comfortable, relaxing, and fun out of any of the drinking establishments I visited during my visit to Kansas City.

Great bar food and cheap beer. The bar keep was friendly and attentive. The food was very good for bar food and the vibe was OK, but sometimes the music was loud.
We had nachos, BBQ pizza, and tacos. All was very good for bar food.
My only complaint would be the need for a drink menu so you knew what was on tap since some of the tappers were hard to read, and asking the bar keep about the beer took away service from other customers.
I would definitely go back to John’s Big Deck.

John’s Big Deck is definitely a dive bar. Walking in on the main floor, it’s dim and dingy. Entering the steep staircase, you start to be able to see the dirty carpet. Climbing the endless 50 steep steps to the deck seems insane. Then you pop out into the sunshine and a comfortable space.
I was there for a large group happy hour. Tables were plentiful and there was room for groups other than ours, although we had 40 – 50 people. Service was a little slow, but to be fair we besieged the staff with the size of our group.
I didn’t order food, but food orders did take about an hour to come out. I did taste some tots and they were yummy, but cold.
There were drinks specials for every taste.
Altogether this is a nice dive and I’d probably go back. I’d go for sure if they had an elevator. Something about drunks and stairs seems like a bad choice.

I can’t think of any better place to spend a gorgeous evening than up on the 3^rd floor of John’s Big Deck. I love the view, including the guilty pleasure of looking in the windows of residents of the buildings that surround it. It can be crowded and noisy in good weather on weekend nights, but it’s a very happy vibe.
Anybody who says the food is average bar fare hasn’t tried the salmon club. It’s an enormous hunk of grilled salmon on fresh ciabatta bread topped with bacon and cheese; tartar sauce, lettuce and tomato come on the side so you can decorate as you please. I got waffle fries with it, which i’m sure came from a bag but were well executed. One of my dining companions got 3 burger sliders with fries, and declared it was actually more than he could comfortably eat.
Although it took awhile for the food to come out, our waitress was nice and brought rounds of drinks out quickly. I don’t recall seeing drink and beer prices posted anywhere, but everything’s reasonable-​2 salmon clubs and the sliders, a Coke and 4 mixed drinks amounted to less than $ 45. It’s a great place to kick back on a nice evening with a few cold ones. Just be careful going back down those stairs!