{"id":57731,"date":"2025-07-11T20:18:08","date_gmt":"2025-07-11T20:18:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/57731\/"},"modified":"2025-07-11T20:18:08","modified_gmt":"2025-07-11T20:18:08","slug":"celeb-owned-johnnys-chicken-waffles-opens-in-fort-worth","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/57731\/","title":{"rendered":"Celeb-owned Johnny&#8217;s Chicken &#038; Waffles opens in Fort Worth"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>A restaurant dedicated to chicken &amp; waffles with celebrity ties is coming to Fort Worth: Called <a href=\"https:\/\/www.johnnyschickenandwaffles.com\/location\/johnnys-chicken-and-waffles-glendale\/\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer nofollow\" target=\"_blank\">Johnny&#8217;s Chicken &amp; Waffles<\/a>, it&#8217;s opening at 2707 Race St. #117, in the space most recently <a href=\"https:\/\/fortworth.culturemap.com\/news\/restaurants-bars\/calisience-birria-tacos-closed\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">occupied<\/a> by Calisience (and before that, Dino&#8217;s Live).<\/p>\n<p>The official opening is July 22, but the restaurant will make a soft-opening debut on July 11.<\/p>\n<p>Johnny&#8217;s was founded by reality TV star Crystal Smith; her ex-husband singer Ne-Yo; and Karlie Redd (VH1\u2019s Love n\u2019 Hip Hop). They debuted the concept in 2020 in the Atlanta area, then <a href=\"https:\/\/dallas.culturemap.com\/news\/restaurants-bars\/johnny-chicken-waffles-crystal-renay\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">opened<\/a> a location in <a href=\"https:\/\/dallas.culturemap.com\/news\/restaurants-bars\/johnnys-chicken-waffles-neyo\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">Dallas<\/a> in 2024.<\/p>\n<p>Chicken &amp; waffles <a href=\"https:\/\/blog.resy.com\/2020\/09\/the-layered-legacy-of-roscoes-house-of-chicken-waffles\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">originated<\/a> in Harlem at a place called Wells Famous Home of Chicken and Waffles, but became famous thanks to Roscoe&#8217;s House of Chicken &amp; Waffles in southern California.<\/p>\n<p>Johnny\u2019s <a href=\"https:\/\/www.johnnyschickenandwaffles.com\/menu\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">menu<\/a> 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.<\/p>\n<ul class=\"ee-ul\">\n<li>Chicken comes in choice of whole wings, tenders, Buffalo wings, or a combo<\/li>\n<li>Waffles comes in choice of buttermilk, pecan, red velvet, or strawberry<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>The signature dish is obviously similar to Roscoe&#8217;s \u2014 &#8220;I take that as a compliment, I absolutely love Roscoe&#8217;s,&#8221; says Smith, who has appeared on TV shows sharing her recipes, and who devised Johnny&#8217;s creative menu.<\/p>\n<p>Their other big signatures include mac &amp; 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.<\/p>\n<p>They also have entrees like Cajun penne pasta, brioche French toast stuffed with cream cheese, fried shrimp basket, catfish &amp; grits, and salads like a kale Caesar. Most items are priced between $22 and $30.<\/p>\n<p>Operations manager Randy Lamp says that the Dallas restaurant has been such a smash \u2014 always busy, and especially on weekends, when brunch draws big lines \u2014 that expanding was a no-brainer.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;We thought, we have this wildly successful restaurant here, it makes sense to open something in the area \u2014 but not right in Dallas,&#8221; Lamp says.<\/p>\n<p>They scouted about 20 locations, but it didn&#8217;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&#8217;s team has a clear vision.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Race Street fit a lot of same criteria as our Dallas location,&#8221; Lamp says. &#8220;It&#8217;s centrally located but it&#8217;s not in a saturated retail area, and that is to our benefit. We are careful in how we choose our neighborhoods and spaces.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Race Street is actually similar to their location in Dallas \u2014 a location that Lamp says &#8220;showed us some things about ourselves that we liked learning.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;One lesson we learned from Dallas is that you don&#8217;t need foot traffic for brunch,&#8221; Lamp says. &#8220;People don&#8217;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&#8217;s no one nearby that&#8217;s going to get mad if we have people waiting in line.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>The area also has many residents nearby, and Lamp says they&#8217;re honored they&#8217;ve already met some.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;It&#8217;s an awesome area in general, and we&#8217;ve already had people knocking on our door and asking when we&#8217;re opening,&#8221; he says.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A restaurant dedicated to chicken &amp; waffles with celebrity ties is coming to Fort Worth: Called Johnny&#8217;s Chicken&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":57732,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5138],"tags":[5229,6329,42199,7371,7372,10084,358,3187,67,586,132,5230,68,2969],"class_list":{"0":"post-57731","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-fort-worth","8":"tag-america","9":"tag-breakfast","10":"tag-brunch","11":"tag-fort-worth","12":"tag-fortworth","13":"tag-openings","14":"tag-texas","15":"tag-tx","16":"tag-united-states","17":"tag-united-states-of-america","18":"tag-unitedstates","19":"tag-unitedstatesofamerica","20":"tag-us","21":"tag-usa"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57731","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=57731"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57731\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/57732"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=57731"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=57731"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=57731"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}