A restaurant dedicated to chicken & waffles with celebrity ties is coming to Fort Worth: Called Johnny’s Chicken & Waffles, it’s opening at 2707 Race St. #117, in the space most recently occupied by Calisience (and before that, Dino’s Live).

The official opening is July 22, but the restaurant will make a soft-opening debut on July 11.

Johnny’s was founded by reality TV star Crystal Smith; her ex-husband singer Ne-Yo; and Karlie Redd (VH1’s Love n’ Hip Hop). They debuted the concept in 2020 in the Atlanta area, then opened a location in Dallas in 2024.

Chicken & waffles originated in Harlem at a place called Wells Famous Home of Chicken and Waffles, but became famous thanks to Roscoe’s House of Chicken & Waffles in southern California.

Johnny’s menu takes a mix-and-match approach: You choose how you want your chicken and then a flavor of waffle, so you can customize your chicken-and-waffle situation to order.

  • Chicken comes in choice of whole wings, tenders, Buffalo wings, or a combo
  • Waffles comes in choice of buttermilk, pecan, red velvet, or strawberry

The signature dish is obviously similar to Roscoe’s — “I take that as a compliment, I absolutely love Roscoe’s,” says Smith, who has appeared on TV shows sharing her recipes, and who devised Johnny’s creative menu.

Their other big signatures include mac & cheese which you can order with chicken tenders, fried shrimp, or fried lobster tail, for $29.95; and cocktails served in mason jars, such as bloody Marys, margaritas, espresso martini, and a strawberry lemonade with cognac.

They also have entrees like Cajun penne pasta, brioche French toast stuffed with cream cheese, fried shrimp basket, catfish & grits, and salads like a kale Caesar. Most items are priced between $22 and $30.

Operations manager Randy Lamp says that the Dallas restaurant has been such a smash — always busy, and especially on weekends, when brunch draws big lines — that expanding was a no-brainer.

“We thought, we have this wildly successful restaurant here, it makes sense to open something in the area — but not right in Dallas,” Lamp says.

They scouted about 20 locations, but it didn’t take them long to narrow it down to Fort Worth. They chose Race Street which has had its ups and downs, but the Johnny’s team has a clear vision.

“Race Street fit a lot of same criteria as our Dallas location,” Lamp says. “It’s centrally located but it’s not in a saturated retail area, and that is to our benefit. We are careful in how we choose our neighborhoods and spaces.”

Race Street is actually similar to their location in Dallas — a location that Lamp says “showed us some things about ourselves that we liked learning.”

“One lesson we learned from Dallas is that you don’t need foot traffic for brunch,” Lamp says. “People don’t mind driving somewhere to get brunch. So a standalone spot with good parking becomes a positive. The Race Street location has a great parking lot right behind it, and there’s no one nearby that’s going to get mad if we have people waiting in line.”

The area also has many residents nearby, and Lamp says they’re honored they’ve already met some.

“It’s an awesome area in general, and we’ve already had people knocking on our door and asking when we’re opening,” he says.