The Belfry/ANNX Spirits
Chef Celina Tio is an award-winning chef. She was named Chef Magazine’s 2005 Chef of the Year and won The James Beard Foundation Award for Best Chef: Midwest in 2007.
She owned her first restaurant, JULIAN, in Brookside in 2009. Her reputation had grown tremendously, leading to high-profile television appearances, including Bravo TV’s Top Chef Masters and Food Network’s Next Iron Chef and Iron Chef America.
Today, she owns and runs The Belfry, one of KC’s top restaurants. It is known for its unique cocktails, craft beers, a menu of creative global eats, and expansive whiskey selection.
The Belfry is named for her Quaker boarding school. Today, bits and pieces of that school are reflected in the artwork in the restaurant.
Chef Celina also owns ANNX Spirits CO, an award-winning liquor brand. She launched four brands that started distribution in January 2023. All of them won medals at the 2023 San Francisco World Spirits Competition, the largest competition of its kind:
Collection is a blend of straight whiskeys, a limited release of hand-selected, blended whiskeys. The first edition is a rye-forward whiskey, a blend of seven-year-old and six-year rye whiskey sold at 115 proof.
600 Acres Vodka is a wheat and corn blend distilled without completely stripping out all the flavors. It has a clean, smooth finish and is bottled at 99 proof.
Moon Age Straight Bourbon Whiskey is a blend of a 2017 batch of 21% high rye bourbon and a 2018 batch of 36% high rye bourbon. It's sold at 101 proof.
Boat House Gin balances an old-school London dry gin with a heavy botanical gin. It has notes of pine, orange peel, and cucumber.
She uses her lifetime of training as a chef, a whiskey expert, and, most of all, a taster to curate top-shelf custom blends of whiskey, gin, and vodka.
ANNX Spirits are available at The Belfry and liquor stores downtown, south down the state line, and in Overland Park, Lawrence, and Wichita.
Visit the Belfry and ANNX Spirits website in the comments to learn more.
Website: www.thebelfrylounge.com & www.annxspiritsco.com