Bluestem. Beignet. Poi-O. The Rieger. The toll of the COVID-19 pandemic extends all too sadly to some of Kansas City’s most adored restaurants, from burger joints to fine food establishments, which permanently closed their doors over the past 10 months amid emptied tables and bars and devastated bottom lines. The local­ dining industry may never be the same. And yet … 

Many more places have managed to hang on, if barely. New ones are opening. KC Restaurant Week arrives as usual this month, a January routine offering the definition of comfort food in uncomfortable, unfathomable times. 

With it comes an opportunity to take stock of the city’s dining scene. In the first of a three-part lunchtime series coinciding with Restaurant Week, restaurateurs Kyo Yamanaka of the shuttered Gojo Japanese Steak House and Chrissy Nucum, owner of the Filipino-flavored KC Pinoy, assess what has been lost. Gojo, opened by Yamanaka’s father more than 42 years ago, is among more than three dozen local dining outlets that have shut their doors for good. While Nucum harbors hope of reopening KC Pinoy’s food truck, she closed its brick-and-mortar location in the West Bottoms in late September. 

Yamanaka and Nucum will talk with ­restaurant critic Liz Cook of The Pitch.