After six years as a mostly weekend only, lunch-to-sellout barbecue operation in the West Bottoms, Chef J BBQ is ready to give the metro its first traditional outdoor smokehouse restaurant.
The new North Kansas City venue will feature live fire, offset smokers set up next to a large outdoor patio where customers can get an up close view of the process and talk firsthand with the pitmasters.
“We’re putting the barbecue front-and-center,” said Justin “Chef J” Easterwood, owner alongside his fiancée, Terra Whipple. “You can see the product. Walk outside and talk to the pitmaster. Ask questions. ‘How long do you cook this? How do you get it to taste like this?’ Talk to the meat cutter. Fresh, cut-to-order barbecue.”
The new Chef J BBQ location will be in the 5,400-square-foot southern end of the former Calibration Brewery building at 1900 Clay St.
It is being remodeled and the couple hope to open the restaurant in early summer, just in time for the 2026 FIFA World Cup.
Meats will be cooked “low and slow” — up to 18 hours.
The menu will include all the classics and some of Chef J’s signature creations: brisket, pulled pork, turkey breast, house made sausage, bacon burnt ends, pork ribs, barbecue Frito pie, sandwiches, and sides, just like the West Bottoms venue. But it also will have some new offerings, including house made breads and pastries, along with dishes that he learned from his Italian grandmother — Grammy — and “elevated dinner specials.”
“Same craft and quality but a full-scale, lunch and dinner restaurant space that we can be proud of and you can come and get it at any time,” Easterwood said of the new daily operation.
He learned to cook in Grammy’s kitchen.
“Any day you showed up, she was making something — pasta, homemade sausage,” he said.
Easterwood also was a young fan of celebrity chef and New Orleans restaurateur Emeril Lagasse.
At 14 years old he was making meals for customers at Original Pizza in Independence Center and stayed with the company until his late 20s.
“What I picked up was from grandma, from Vito, the original owner of Original Pizza; both old school Italian,” Easterwood said. “And I’ve never been afraid to experiment.”
Indeed, after working all day at the restaurant, he started barbecuing in his backyard in his late teens — then cooking for his friends at Arrowhead Stadium tailgates. Later he started a catering operation on the side, serving a variety of cuisines.
“Learning through trial and error. Formulating my own recipes,” he said. “But my passion has always been with the fire.”
Whipple gave him the confidence boost he needed to take on barbecue as a business in a city known for great barbecue restaurants.
“She said, ‘Your barbecue is better than anyone I have ever known,’” he said.
Easterwood and Whipple, who have two children, opened Chef J BBQ in the West Bottoms in early 2020. They took a space in The Beast haunted house building at 1401 W. 13th St., Suite G, serving barbecue Thursdays through Sundays.
“We were just getting started and the whole world shut down for COVID,” Easterwood said. “But the landlord was understanding and allowed us to grow into that.”
They will keep running the West Bottoms operation after the new Northland restaurant opens. The new location will have more than 30 employees.
Chef J BBQ also is now in Arrowhead and Kauffman stadiums. The couple had planned to open in Pennway Point entertainment district at West 25th Street and Pennway Street, but construction delays had them dropping those plans for now.
Whipple oversees the business side — from marketing and social media to human resources.
“We’ve always approached it as a craft. The time and labor that goes into old school barbecue is a lot. But it has worked really well for us,” he said. “We’re likely to be the new smell of North Kansas City.”
Joanna Shawver, owner of the Shawver Group commercial real estate, handled the negotiations for the landlord. She had previously handled the negotiations for Tropical Smoothie Cafe which opened in the north end of the Calibration Brewery building.
This article originally appeared in Startland News, a fellow member of the KC Media Collective.
