After more than a year of what seemed like constant reports of new chicken restaurants in Lawrence, there has been a lull lately. Don’t let that silence fool you, though. There is game-changing news on the fowl front: The chickens have mobilized. In other words, there is a new chicken restaurant in Lawrence, and it will have a food truck too.

Southern Poppy has opened in the VFW building at 1801 Massachusetts St. Southern Poppy is not a full-on chicken restaurant, but rather is a southern and Cajun-style restaurant. But owner and chef Amber Brown said her signature dish definitely is chicken and waffles.

“I make all of my own spices and seasonings, and the waffle batter is homemade,” Brown said.

Chicken also plays a prominent role in a couple of other dishes, including what Brown calls a “Midwest gumbo.” It features smoked sausage and chicken rather than shellfish. The dish does still include Cajun rice, and it comes with a cornbread waffle, which is cornbread batter fried like a waffle.

You may be picking up that waffles also are a big theme for the restaurant, and they are not married to chicken. Brown expects one of her more popular dishes to be a waffle burger, which is a hamburger that is served between two waffles. Somewhere, there is a chicken laughing.

Southern Poppy opened a few weeks ago in the VFW building, which has hosted several restaurants over the last couple of years. Although the VFW is a private club, you don’t have to be a member to enter the restaurant portion. But Southern Poppy is only open from 1 p.m. to 9 p.m. Monday through Thursday. The restaurant is reserving its weekends for a new food truck or, more accurately, a food trailer.

The food trailer has been built — complete with smoker, barbecue grill, flattop, fryers and other accessories — and is just awaiting its final inspections. Brown said it will be unveiled at a grand opening event on Aug. 12 at the VFW.

But in the future, look for the food trailer at locations other than the VFW. Initially, the food wagon will be in the parking lot of the shopping center at 19th and Haskell, but Brown expects to find other locations around town as well.

“We’ll probably be popping up all over town,” Brown said.

The food trailer will do the chicken and waffles, gumbo, sandwiches and other items that are on the brick-and-mortar restaurant menu. But it also will do breakfast. Brown said that means both early morning breakfast and late-night breakfast. Brown has good experience with the late-night crowd. She got her start in the Lawrence food scene operating a chicken and waffle delivery service that catered to the college crowd.

Brown said she plans to restart that delivery service once the food trailer business gets off the ground. That will give students the option to come visit the food wagon late at night or simply call in an order for delivery.

“I would rather bring the food to some of them,” Brown said of the after-party crowd. “There are some of them that don’t need to be driving.”

The restaurant and food wagon represents Brown’s biggest jump into the Lawrence culinary scene yet. About 15 years ago, she came to Lawrence at the age of 15, got her GED and made her way into the culinary program at Johnson County Community College. After learning that it was hard to make money while working for someone else in the food business, she started on her own making cookies and pies for the holiday season, and somehow that “morphed into ‘let’s do a delivery service for drunk college kids.'”

With her new business, Brown thinks she has found a niche that will please both customers and herself.

“I eat a lot of spicy food, so I just started playing with the things that I like to eat,” Brown said. “I just love cooking it.”