Chef J BBQ — Restaurant in Kansas City

One more update 04-19-2024: I see in another review they too saw you take your squirt bottle and run a stream of something down the middle of 5 or 6 trays and then wipe them front and back. And then you did indeed walk over and corrected the new guy's presentation and touch the people's food with the exact same gloves you did the trays with 100% guarantee it positively saw it myself. I immediately thought somebody needs to call the health department but fortunately you put a paper down on the tray before you put my food on it. You cannot deny this as there was a buzz in the line of people waiting when you did it.

Update 04-19-2024: The food truck mentality comment was because it's like ordering from a food truck window instead of a barbecue restaurant. You have a ton of space why don't you put the cash register at the front take the order move the people around to the end of the bar and fill the bar up with people waiting with their trays. While your meat cutter cuts and weighs if necessary your sides guy can make his rounds, as the meat hits the platter your quality control guy can come around I think that was Chef Jay I don't know. But he should not be wiping the trays down and cleaning them and then with the same gloves touching people's food as he did that day, your customer can go ahead and have his drink ready and perhaps a table selected. And then start up selling the desert. I realize you sell out early so you may not care, but I think if you will notice this is how must all other barbecue restaurants do it. Your brisket was excellent even with no sauce. And I ate the ribs dry and they were excellent except the short rib I got on the and had no meat on it at all so I really only got two bones. Your smoker is big enough you should be able to make it from lunch till dinner just streamline a little.

The food was okay nothing special. Brisket was better than a lot of places and the ribs are actually prepared properly with just the right amount of pole and good flavor. The beans were inedible in the macaroni and cheese was okay but it's plain old macaroni and cheese with some Parmesan tossed on top. The biggest problem here is they still have food truck mentality. One person takes the order and that person also cuts the meat while three other people stand around. Once he prepares the meat he hands it off to the sides guy. Then you get shuffled around to the register. The other person behind the counter I watched him squirt out of a ketchup bottle some kind of fluid or liquid and then wipe five trays down front and back and then he came straight over and corrected the guys presentation touching the food in the container of the people in front of me. It appeared to have the new guy cutting the meat and he was not fast. If you get ribs on the plate the two or three or for me played etcetera and you get the end of the rib like I did you actually get too real ribs the third Rib was nothing there and a good barbecue person would know that but this amateur had no idea. One reasonably thick slab of brisket that was good alarm for $32.00 3 small portions of meat and two small sides and a drink pardon the pun but it was a little hard to swallow. They need to have one person take the order one person cut the meat and lay the plates out all along the big bar so you can service 5 or 10 people at a time it's a no-brainer frankly. I mean literally it's a no-brainer stop having one person do almost everything and three people stand around with their thumbs up their butts. It's a one-time visit for me and I reckon it will be for most people until they change their methodology and provide more food...

Chef J is a Q startup I first spotted in Google Maps. And there's a good reason it opens at 11:30 a.m. Thurs. through Sat., noon on Sun., and they close down at 4 p.m., Because They Sell Out. I was looking for new barbeque "blood," if you will, new hands in the game that I could try during my first multi-day stay in my hometown since 2011. Chef J lived up to other Googlers' rave reviews, with underlined emphasis. The array of smoked meats is without a weak option. The brisket shows a perfect smoke ring, it's soft and moist and graced by a delectable rub. The jalapeno-chese sausage is juicy and flavorful, I think there are some embedded herbs involved. The ribs are spares, but selected to assure there's a moderate fat layer on one side, so they don't dry out in the smoker. They serve meat by the pound, and offer sandwiches and some excellent sides. I had chipotle slaw, which was terrific, spicy and tangy, and mac & cheese, which was the only thing that missed the satisfaction mark, it was too mild a white cheese treatment. Next time I'll try the pit beans and the bacon & blue cheese potato salad. They give you all three of their homemade sauce varieties: the K.C. style red, a Carolina vinegar and a mustard-based, which were all awesome. I was due to hit the road in the truck, but I hit ChefJ as it opened up on a Chiefs football Sunday, with 6 hours to drive. They carefully and snugly wrapped everything up, but I had to open up one corner of the foil tray and free a lone rib before resealing it and driving. The smell and the taste made me want to grab a table space in their high-ceilinged dining room and eat half a rack of the two full slabs I bought, and damn my road schedule. (I heard the space used to be a regional hub for John Deere?) This neighborhood in the long-unused West Bottoms district is home to antiques stores and a coffee shop with a cute black lab mix, the store dog. All about five blocks from the state line.

You can get there easily by taking I-670 West out of Downtown, but be ready to QUICKLY get off to the right at Exit 1B (Wyoming/Genesee streets), or else you'll roll across the Kaw into KCK. This takes you over the rail beds, then you make a right on Wyoming, go north a block, take another right on 12th St., another block then another right, tracking back east onto Hickory St. (appropriate), then look to park. I know Gmaps shows all this, but the Bottoms is a tad confusing as a road grid, it's easy to overshoot the 13th St. location. The 12th St. Viaduct west out of Downtown also works, and you turn left at Liberty St, then track back east 1 block to Hickory.

Chef J (for Justin) also made use, in August 2024 anyway, of the "Local Foods" concession space behind the 3rd base line, lower level at Kauffman Stadium, where I had a brisket sammie that put the hook in me. You gotta check this place out, they know Exactly what they're doing, and that's why there's a line that runs around the corner waiting for them to open up. Some other older K.C. Q institutions have either lost some of their mojo, or for the taste they aren't worth what they're now charging. This place can rub shoulders with Arthur Bryant's, which imo is still doing it right. But get there for open-up. Come hungry, and order...

Phenomenal BBQ! This place is off-the-charts good! And there are lines daily to prove it!

I've been wanting to try Chef J's since it opened, but I could never seem to get myself down there. Some obstacle always came up: I was traveling, I forgot about them, they weren't open (they only serve Thursday-Sunday), they were sold out (happens every day they are open), or some other madness.

Well, today was the day. Very rainy, low-key Saturday, so I figured I'd head over and see if I could grab some Q! On a typical day, the lines form outside and around the block so I thought maybe the lines would be short with the rain coming down. I was pleasantly surprised to see the line was tolerable (not short, but not around the block either.)

I arrived at 11:38 a.m., they open at 11:30 a.m. there was a line already. By the time I reached the order counter the smoked turkey was already sold out. I ordered brisket, burnt ends, and a slab. They only had a half slab remaining. I took it. Sorry to everyone behind me in line. (Pro Tip: GET THERE EARLY!!!)

The food was outrageously good! Chef J's just took over the number 1 spot in my MO/KS BBQ list (just barely edging out Slap's, it's almost too close to call).

The Great: • Ribs fall off the bone! Perfect amount of smoke and char. Prepared so well I could literally eat the tips of every bone, and I did. (Fiber 😅) • pulled pork with wonderful juicy and very tasty • The sauces are awesome! I could drink that Carolina gold! • staff is awesome, everybody's friendly and hard-working.

The Good: • portion sizes are very good • The ambiance fits well. Not a ton of seating but enough to get the first wave of customers in. • brisket was delicious. Not quite as moist as I typically like it but definitely something I would eat again. •

Needs Improvement: • it's a good problem for an owner to have, but this place is just too busy for the size of the operation in the amount of staff that they have. The operational process definitely could be better. There's a bottleneck right from the get-go in that the person you order from is the same person who starts a meal prep. This means only one party can order at a time and then you stand there and wait for a few minutes while they start loading your plates. I don't know if there's a facility or operational reason that it's set up this way if there seems like it could be improved just by splitting up that first part of the process. • sticking with the theme of being "too popular", Everything seems to sell out way too soon. On this particular day I was maybe the 50th customer through the door and they had already sold out of smoked turkey and I grabbed the last of the ribs. They hadn't even been opened an hour at that point. Again I don't know what sort of facility or operational obstacles there are to increasing the amount of food they have prepared, but I sure feel bad for anybody who came in after that point. This stuff is too good to be that limited 😁

Bottom line, I am absolutely thrilled that the two best barbecue places in my opinion are equidistant of my house. I could walk to either one if I needed to. I'm glad to have found my new favorite barbecue...