Tell anyone you're headed to Kansas City, and their reaction will likely be, “Get ready to eat so much barbecue.” The Midwestern city, which straddles the Kansas and Missouri border, is home to many notable temples of meat. Every local I asked pledged allegiance to a particular spot, claiming Arthur Bryant’s or Joe’s Kansas City Bar-B-Que or Q39 was the spot worth waiting in line for in a city with well over 35 barbecue joints. But Kansas City is not just a mecca for barbecue, but for something gooier and more unexpected—cinnamon rolls.

As someone who would rather eat flora over fauna, I was less interested in standing outside for hours in the summer heat, sweating for barbecued meat. (To be fair, I did it once during my trip, and it was great.) As I poked around the internet for KC’s best restaurants, I noticed a trend: Nearly every cafe, bakery, and even a restaurant run by James Beard Award-winning chefs had a cinnamon roll on the menu. Before I hopped on the plane, I had a list of nearly eleven I hoped to eat in the 48 hours I had in the city.

While it makes sense for KC to have such a strong cinnamon roll culture—after all, the Midwest excels at baking and comfort foods—no one I spoke to seemed aware of the insanely high concentration in the city, and no one had an allegiance to a bakery with their favorite version when I asked.

But as I drove around the city cramming one flaky, frosted cinnamon roll into my mouth after another, the sugar high made clear that KC has cinnamon roll making down to a science—to the point that even the airport hotel, typically a wasteland for food, had a delicious one at the breakfast buffet. Topped with everything from mounds of cream cheese frosting to slicks of vanilla glaze, each cinnamon roll I had was a giant, fluffy reminder to make sure to return to Kansas City in the near future.

Cream cheese frosting makes Scratch's cinnamon roll. Khushbu Shah

Scratch

A recent addition to the city (the brick-and-mortar opened in March), this hip and minimalist bakery makes a flaky cinnamon roll that's more moderate in size. The real draw is the thick slather of cream cheese frosting on top. If you need additional sweet treats, Scratch makes some very Instagrammable pop-tarts, as well.

Luckily, Corner Cafe has three outposts around the city. Khushbu Shah

Corner Cafe

There are three locations strewn across the greater Kansas City area, and each serves a monstrous and thoroughly impressive cinnamon roll. These things feature several spirals of dough, butter, and cinnamon and require a serrated knife to get through.

Heirloom Bakery and Hearth

The extensive menu has everything from loaves of freshly baked bread, sliced and toasted to order with your choice of house-made jams, to piles of crumbly biscuits that are turned into filling egg sandwiches, and extremely photogenic key lime pie bars. But the real star is the light and fluffy cinnamon roll, which is lighter on the cinnamon and heavier on the frosting. Make sure to get there early though—the rolls sell out fast.

Donut King knows what to do with pecans. Khushbu Shah

Donut King

While you might not expect to find stellar cinnamon rolls in an awkward strip mall located just off the highway, that's exactly what Donut King serves up. In addition to more than 40 donut flavors, the store also makes a gargantuan (seriously, they are as large as a human head) caramel pecan cinnamon roll topped with a flourish of chopped nuts.

Don't wait, or you might miss out on Rye's rolls. Khushbu Shah

Rye

Located in the suburb of Leawood, these classic, plate-sized cinnamon rolls are worth the drive out. They're one of the stars of the comfort food menu at chefs Colby and Megan Garrelts restaurant Rye. (The Garrelts are also the couple behind the James Beard-nominated Bluestem.) The rolls sit piled high on a table near the kitchen, but be sure to ask for one as soon as you sit down, or they might disappear before you get the chance.