One of KC’s best barbecue joints is expanding—big time.
Since opening in the West Bottoms in 2020, Chef J BBQ‘s tender ribs and massive meat platters have steadily earned the barbecue restaurant recognition as one of best in KC. (We even dubbed it KC’s No. 1 barbecue restaurant in 2023.) Now owners Justin Easterwood and Terra Whipple are heading north, opening a second location in North Kansas City (1900 Clay St., NKC). The new restaurant will feature several major additions, including an open smokehouse, a patio, five 1,000-gallon custom offset pits and a bread and pastry program – all expected to be up and running by this summer, just in time for the World Cup.
“We’ve heard the complaints since we’ve been around – that we run out of food, it’s hard to get, we’re only open during certain hours, this and that,” Easterwood says. “So now that will no longer be an issue. This new restaurant is going to be open seven days a week with lunch and dinner service.”
With significantly more space, the 5,400-square-foot restaurant with an additional 4,000-square-foot patio, will seat roughly 300 combined, Easterwood is aiming for a more elevated restaurant experience. The menu will expand beyond barbecue, with cooked-to-order items like steak frites and smoked burgers. Easterwood will also finally get to highlight his longtime love of desserts.
“We’ve operated as a sell-out model for quite some time,” says Easterwood. “This new restaurant is not a sell-out model—it’s a full-scale restaurant. The goal is to have food all day. There will still be times we run out of something because it’s fresh, but now we’ve got the firepower and the cooking capacity.”
Chef J’s original West Bottoms location will continue operating as usual. But Easterwood is especially excited about the Northland space (formerly Calibration Brewery) because it includes something his flagship never had: a full kitchen.
His current restaurant occupies the old concession stand for The Beast haunted house, where most everything is made in the pits, on a few induction burners and stored in a single three-door cooler.
“I’m grateful for Restaurant Depot being across the street,” Easterwood jokes.
With a full kitchen, the pit master plans to launch a from-scratch bread and pastry program inspired by his 25 years working with pizza in Italian restaurants. While much of the expanded lunch and dinner menu will remain under wraps for now, he’s already teasing desserts like soft-serve ice cream, pies and what he aims to be “the best chocolate cake in town.”
The restaurant will have a liquor license, though Easterwood says he doesn’t plan to sell hard liquor, keeping the focus on a family-friendly environment—and, above all, live-fire cooking.
The large patio will center around a 1,400-square-foot smokehouse, something Easterwood says is more commonly seen in Texas barbecue spots. Still, he says he’s “a Kansas City guy through and through” and “[doesn’t] like to talk too much about Texas.”
“You can come up, interact with the pitmasters, take your photos,” says Easterwood. “It’s more of an experience.”
Between the barbecue atmosphere and the cooked-to-order menu, the restaurant looks to bring a slightly different approach to KC barbecue.
“We approach [the menu] as being somewhat shareable,” he says. “Imagine coming in with your group, getting a few selections of meats by the pound, a couple sides, maybe a brisket focaccia. Then you’ve got a shareable steak entrée coming out that the whole table can grub on.”
Easterwood is excited for Chef J BBQ to cater to the Northland’s “workin’ man” lunch crowd, while expanding into catering, private parties and preorders, something the Chef J BBQ flagship location currently can’t accommodate.
What will remain the same, however, is Easterwood’s dedication to live fire.
“There’s nothing more barbecue than a big twenty foot long tank with a fire burning at the end,” says the pit master. “Now we’ll have five of them.”
