A locally-owned restaurant known for “fresh, never frozen” chicken has further expanded its Johnson County footprint.
Strip’s Chicken & Brewing opened its doors last week — in the former home of Mexican eatery El DD Mexican Bar and Grill off Santa Fe Trail Drive.
Strip’s Chicken & Brewing is at 12804 Santa Fe Trail Drive
- The restaurant occupies a space off Parkhill Street and Santa Fe Trail Drive.
- El DD Mexican Bar and Grill operated out of that space before it closed at the end of 2023. Before that, the space was home to barbecue eatery Hayward’s, before the restaurant relocated to Shawnee.
- Strip’s is open from 11 a.m. to 10 p.m. Monday through Saturday.
Strip’s serves “scratch-made” fast-casual fare
The Strip’s menu offers chicken in various forms, from tenders and wings to chicken sandwiches.
In addition to chicken, the restaurant also serves other items like burgers and pork sandwiches as well as sides like onion rings, pork rinds and fried pickles.
“The only thing we have in our freezer is french fries,” Johnson said. “My goal on the menu is for everything to be as unique as possible.”
On the brewing side, Strip’s offers nine beers that he created through partnerships with local breweries like Shawnee-based Transport Brewing and Mission-based Sandhills Brewing.
The menu also features a limited selection of wines — including a newly-added red wine from Mendoza, Argentina — and also signature “clucktails” like boozy cranberry lemonades and margaritas.
Each of those beers and cocktails have personal ties to Johnson’s family history and the restaurant’s history, and those are reflected in the Lenexa space’s decor (with framed anecdotes on the walls above booths).
The building itself, Johnson said, is full of its own stories — which has been an intriguing part of bringing his own concept into it.
“The funny thing is, it’s been so many different concepts, virtually everyone has a story about this place,” he said. “It’s just interesting to get to hear all the stories about this building.”
This marks the third Strip’s location in Johnson County
Johnson worked in restaurant consulting for several years before he opened the first Strip’s in Olathe in 2016.
Upon watching chicken-focused chains like Raising Cane’s and Zaxby’s become popular in the south, he said, he’d realized how large the potential was for a more scratch-focused version of it.
The Olathe location now serves as the brand’s “express” location, while the Merriam and Lenexa locations are more geared toward sit-down dining. (Strip’s also had a location in Kansas City, Missouri’s Waldo neighborhood, but that location closed earlier this year.)
Raised in a farm family, Johnson said he grew up around fresh food, helping to harvest and prepare it alongside his siblings, parents and grandparents.
“We may not have had much, but we always had good food,” he said. “I’m always about making everything from scratch and having it fresh.”
Customers at Strip’s in Lenexa will get to see a unique reflection of that upbringing. Later on, Johnson said he plans to utilize the land behind the restaurant for a garden with fresh vegetables.
With the help of the garden and the Lenexa location’s extra kitchen space, he said he hopes to grow the restaurant’s menu eventually, with dishes like prime rib and pastas.
“We’re going to do a lot of cool things here at this building that will eventually probably evolve into more of an upscale menu at this location,” he said. “We’ll see how this all works. It’s still a work in progress, but I’m excited about it.”
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