Chicken and Ale: This chicken joint has crafted the perfect beer pairing

Strip’s Chicken, now with a third location open in Lenexa, claims to serve a bespoke beer deliberately crafted to be enjoyed with their “broasted” dishes. In fact, owner Todd Johnson, who opened his first Strip’s Chicken restaurant in 2016, says its 59 Diner Amber Ale is “perhaps the first beer created to pair well with fried chicken.”

If you don’t know what it means to “broast” a chicken, don’t feel bad—neither did we. The process involves pressure cooking the bird in oil first to retain moisture and then ending with a shallow-frying finish for a crispy breading. Maybe it’s a portmanteau of braising and roasting; maybe it’s not. Either way, this specially crafted beer by Vine Street Brewing, KC’s first Black-owned brewery, was designed to pair nicely with Strip’s chicken. And it does.

Johnson named the amber ale as a nod to his grandmother, Virginia, and their lineage of “chickeneering,” which winds all the way back to the 59 Diner just south of Erie, Kansas. The 59 Diner claims to have served some of the first broasted chicken in the area, and the 59 Diner Broasted Amber Ale is an homage to this signature dish.

Amber ales use grain roasted longer than traditional lager or pale ale brewing, and this cooked malt gives the beer rich, toasty notes and its eponymous dark-ferrous coloring. The 59 Diner tastes “broasted,” and that strong flavor comes through over a nicely light beer. The roast of the ale plays well with the pepper in the breading, and the light body leaves plenty of room for a lot of chicken. The only thing more fun than enjoying this dance is imagining the hours of trial and error it took to choreograph. 

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