Restaurant that’s become a destination in nearby town is opening in Wichita

A popular restaurant in nearby Garden Plain is about to add a Wichita presence.

Shad and Stephanie Biggs, who three years ago opened Halagains in the town of just under 1,000, are taking over the spot at 1106 S. Seneca where Champ’s 316 Bar & Grill has operated since the 1990s. Champ’s owners Hamendra Bhakta and Jason Bradley, who’d owned the restaurant since 2020, closed it on Tuesday, and the Biggs signed papers for the building on Thursday.

They plan to have the Wichita Halagains open in a couple of weeks, they said. The Garden Plain restaurant will continue to operate, too.

Halagains, which opened at 501 N. Main in Garden Plain in early 2023, serves an eclectic mix of pizzas, sandwiches and skillets, which the owners make by piling pizza toppings onto a bed of seasoned potatoes.

Halagains is especially known for its use of tri-tip, a cut of meat that’s more common on the West Coast. Halagains uses its tender tri-tip in a skillet that also includes garlic, onions, bell peppers and jack cheese and also on a couple of its sandwiches, including the popular Game Changer, topped with roasted onions and peppers, provolone cheese, bacon, house mustard and jalapenos.

In the Wichita restaurant, Halagains won’t serve pizza because the kitchen is too small. But the Wichita menu will include the other dishes from Garden Plain, including burgers.

The owners want to get the business open soon, and though they have plans to upgrade the space, they’ll do the work as they can over the next couple of years, they said. Included in their plans: increasing the size of the kitchen and relocating the bar.

They plan to be open daily, they said, and their hours will likely be 11 a.m. to 2 a.m. The Wichita Halagains will offer a daily happy hour and food specials. It will also have special events like live music, trivia, karaoke and bingo.

Expanding into Wichita has always been the couples’ goal, they said, and the Champ’s building suited their needs.

“We were looking for another space and came across it,” Shad said. “We like the location, the size, the patio. . . .”

Bhakta, meanwhile, is now completely out of the restaurant business. In addition to Champ’s, he also was the franchisee for the BD’s Mongolian Grill that operated at Douglas and Rock from 2020 to 2024 and the owner of Walt’s All American Bar & Grill at 5534 W. Central, which he closed in 2023 to expand his Global Auto Company car lot.

The Biggs family moved to Kansas from California in 2019. Their Garden Plain restaurant has become a gathering place for the residents of Garden Plain, which sits about 10 miles due west of Wichita, and a destination for people from Kingman, Hutchinson and Andale.

Before opening the restaurant, the Biggs operated a food truck called The Underdog.

This story was originally published January 16, 2026 at 8:38 AM.

Denise Neil

The Wichita Eagle

316-268-6327

Denise Neil has covered restaurants and entertainment since 1997. Her Dining with Denise Facebook page is the go-to place for diners to get information about local restaurants. She’s a regular judge at local food competitions and speaks to groups all over Wichita about dining.