Village Shops’ Cafe Provence gets Top Restaurant rating from Zagat

Cafe Provence was one of 13 French restaurants across the country to make the Zagat list of America’s 46 Top Restaurants. No other food genre was as well represented.

A Prairie Village fine-dinery has found its way onto an elite list of national restaurants.

Zagat Guide this month released its annual Top American Restaurants Survey, featuring the renowned ratings guide’s top food-rated restaurants in the country’s 46 largest markets. For the Kansas City metro, Zagat tapped the Village Shops’ Cafe Provence.

It’s an honor that proprietor Patrick Quillec says is all the more meaningful because the restaurant is in Johnson County — which he says lets them cater to group of faithful local customers, but doesn’t always pop up on the national radar.

“We don’t tend to get much national attention in the press because we’re in Kansas, and when these kinds of guides are looking at restaurants they tend to look at places in Kansas City, Mo.,” he said. “We’re definitely excited.”

The honor puts Cafe Provence among world-class company like Gary Danko restaurant in San Francisco and Le Bernardin in New York. Smithville’s Justus Drugstore received the second highest food ranking in the Kansas City area.