The steak-loving crew behind Laurelhurst Market plans to spin off their popular parking-lot chicken event into a counter-service restaurant, just one neighborhood to the east.
Next month, co-owners Ben Dyer, Jason Owens, David Kreifels and new recruit Ben Bettinger will open Big’s Chicken, a shotgun chicken shack with craft beer and cocktails in North Tabor’s former Big Ass Sandwiches’ storefront, The Oregonian/OregonLive.com has learned.
The restaurant is a spin-off of Laurelhurst Market’s successful Five Napkin Chicken lunches, which popped up in the restaurant’s parking lot last year, serving smoked and grilled chicken marinated in a Fresno chile sauce and drenched in Alabama’s signature mayo-based white gold sauce, plus sausages and sides.
When it opens, the restaurant will bring a new eating option to a stretch of Northeast Glisan Street near Providence Portland Medical Center with few restaurants (though, oddly enough, Big’s Chicken will be just down the hill from Chicken Little, the dive-bar fried-chicken shack.) Expect Big’s to take full advantage of its adjacent parking lot, with whole chickens, half chickens and boneless thighs available to stay or go, or delivered through a to-be-determined service. Look for four beers on tap, plus “a very simple cocktail program (‘program’ might be too big a word),” Dyer writes.
After closing the dining hall hall half of their ground-breaking Simpatica Catering and Dining Hall last year, the Laurelhurst Market team, which also owns Reverend’s BBQ in Westmoreland, has been on a mini expansion run. In addition to Big’s, they added chef Bettinger (Beaker & Flask) to their ownership team in May and debuted a second Ate-Oh-Ate Hawaiian restaurant in the Woodstock neighborhood in October.
Look for Big’s Chicken to open in March in the former Big Ass Sandwiches space, 5663 N.E. Glisan St.
— Michael Russell Follow @tdmrussell
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