The name Catch 22 has nothing to do with seafood at Gary Johnson’s new Johnsburg restaurant.

There are seafood options at Catch 22 Tap & Grill, located at 4000 N. Johnsburg Road. The menu includes burgers, salads, wraps, sandwiches and wings, along with a Friday night fish and shrimp fry, a mahi mahi sandwich, the Cod Father sandwich and a lobster roll.

But when Johnson was bouncing around name ideas for the restaurant, he was thinking of “Catch 22″ as it applies to Joseph Heller’s 1961 book - not a seafood-based menu.

Johnson was envisioning humorous T-shirts, hoodies and other merch for the restaurant using “paradoxical” humor. He’s waiting on his first shipment of branded clothing customers can buy.

“For St. Patrick’s Day, we had a shirt - ‘Irish today, regretting tomorrow,’” Johnson said, as one example.

His sense of humor extends to the kids’ menu. Its $9 and $10 entrees include butter noodles, mac and cheese, chicken strips and burgers. The liver and onions kids’ meal is a little higher at $250 – with a note underneath saying, “We got you, kids.”

Johnson has some experience in running a restaurant.

“I started doing this at 21, and it’s been about 25 years now,” he said.

He was just 21 when he bought Old World Pizza in Algonquin. His next restaurant was Windy City Wings in McHenry. That restaurant closed after a power lines fell on the Green Street building and burned it to the ground in December 2012. The lot is now the home to Jexal’s Pizza & Wing-Zeria.

For six years, Johnson had Johnsburg’s Cabana’s on the Chain - now The Bru Crew Bar & Grill – and sold when his family set eyes on moving to Florida. That plan fell through – the homes they were looking at were taken out by a hurricane, Johnson said.

Most recently, Johnson opened The Kross in Ingleside. He bills that restaurant as a dive bar with really good food.

All that experience taught him the food-serving business through trial and error, Johnson said.

“You make enough mistakes; you learn to not do that again,” he said.

With Catch 22, Johnson and general manager Kristi Rasmussen said they want to create an atmosphere where parents and grandparents feel comfortable coming in with children.

“I want all ages here, from kids to young adults to ... old adults,” Rasmussen said. “We want everyone to feel welcome.”

They offer free ice cream scoops to children. He expects the neighborhood youth will bike over in the summer to take advantage of that.

“We are a restaurant that also has a bar. I don’t want to be a bar first – I want to have the restaurant first," Johnson said.

When Johnson gutted and rebuilt the space that used to be Mary’s Hideaway, he made sure there were games for kids to play, along with the pool table and a single dartboard. He’s also applied for a gaming license and is waiting for state approval.

Gaming machines helps keep menu costs down, Johnson said, adding they “offset the food and and the employee costs. It offsets what we can charge as far as our products. I want to be as cheap as possible and still be able to sleep at night.”