TSnews

GARDEN PLAIN – It has been a good two years for Halagains Bar and Woodfire Kitchen in Garden Plain.

In fact, business has gone well enough that the locally-owned restaurant will soon be expanding into the space next door to the north. Owners Shad and Stephanie Biggs have purchased the space that housed Talarico’s Pizza for many years. Other restaurants followed in that location but could not find longterm success. That space has sat empty for a long time.

Halagains opened in the spot that for many years was home to The Other Place. They are known for their pizzas and their skillets, the latter of which feature a variety of items over potatoes. They have a full sandwich menu plus other items, and daily specials. The restaurant currently is open Wednesday through Saturday.

Shad Biggs said that the two spaces will be connected by a hallway. The new space on the north will be used for both kitchen and dining space. In the original side on the south, the bar will move to where the current kitchen is, making for a larger space.

Shad said there is not a timetable for completing construction. Once it is done, the recently-introduced breakfast menu will return.

Shad said that Halagains will likely be open more days after that. He is looking to expand the lunch and dinner menu to add more variety, as well.

Halagains has seen a lot of success from Garden Plain as well as from other communities in the area. The menu items and food quality exceed what many small towns offer, and that has helped make Halagains a destination spot.

“We’ve had a lot of support from the communities. People come from a ways out. We never expected it to be this busy,” he said.

Updates on construction, new hours and menu items will be posted on Halagains’ Facebook page.

They continue to offer specials each night. There is karaoke on Saturday nights, and team trivia was recently added on Thursdays.

The Biggs family moved to Kansas from California in 2019. They were looking for a different lifestyle and hoped to live in a small town. They told TSnews in January 2023 that they started with a vegetable stand, and soon converted a trailer to a kitchen known as The Underdog, and it gained a following. The Other Place began allowing The Underdog to use their kitchen, and the Biggses did a lot of cooking there.

Neither Stephanie nor Shad could say for sure where the idea for a food truck came from. They joked that it was one of those ideas hatched over a couple of beers, asking “Whose idea was this?”

One key idea was to have a wood fired oven as the centerpiece.

Stephanie noted in 2023 that the entire family is involved.

“We like to cook. All of our kids cook. We’re a food family,” she said.

Halagains is located at 501 N. Main.