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Portland's most successful restaurateur is going into business with the city's biggest football star.
In September, Micah Camden—the man behind Blue Star Donuts, Boxer Ramen and Super Deluxe—will open Bae's Chicken in the former home of the Ash Street Saloon, the downtown rock club at 225 SW Ash Street that closed at the end of 2017. His partner in the project? Portland-born defensive tackle Ndamukong Suh.
Related: Other Portland Chefs Want to Make Food Into Art. Micah Camden Makes Money.
Camden says he first met Suh around the time he launched Little Big Burger, the burger joint he started in 2010 and sold for $6.1 million five years later. They stayed in touch, and Camden says Suh approached him about starting this venture.
It will be Camden's third new restaurant this year.
This spring, Camden launched Little Bean, a chickpea-based ice cream shop in the Pearl, and a second location of Super Deluxe opened today in Northwest Portland.
Camden declined to provide many details on the new spot, only saying that it will offer a "stepped-up version of a chicken sandwich." It's not Camden's first chicken concept: Son of a Biscuit, which opened on Southeast Division Street in 2014, is among his entrepreneurial failures. (It closed only a year after opening.) But Camden says he learned from that business's mistakes, and that the menu at Bae's will be very much in his "wheelhouse."
Suh grew up in Northeast Portland and played football at Grant High School. He was a finalist for the 2009 Heisman Trophy and was drafted second overall by the Detroit Lions in the 2010 NFL draft. He currently plays for the Tampa Bay Buccaneers.
Camden says they're aiming for mid-September opening.