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After a business-ending fire last July, Big's Chicken is coming back.
But not to Portland just yet.
According to Big's co-owner Ben Dyer, the new Big's will be in Beaverton, serving up smoked thighs, birds, wings, potato wedges and white-gold Alabama and sarat gat pepper sauces to what Dyer calls an "untapped market."
This is, of course, part of a larger trend of Portland fast-casual restaurateurs taking their goods to the burbs, from B.J. Smith's Vancouver outpost of Smokehouse Tavern to the forthcoming Happy Valley complex offering up Mi Mero Mole, Pizza Jerk and Bunk.
The smoked-chicken spot, which started as a summertime pop-up in the parking lot of Dyer's steak house Laurelhurst Market, burned down at its busy Northeast Glisan brick-and-mortar location after apparently being struck by an errant firework.
"It's gonna be largely the same," says Dyer of the new Beaverton location. "We'll tweak the menu just a little bit. We were doing really well on the Glisan spot before it burned down. But the space will be a lot bigger, we'll have twice as many seats."
The new spot—located at 4570 SW Watson St., in the heart of K-town across from longtime Korean spot Nak Won—will also have a different version of the previous one's theme of roadside chicken shack.
The previous business in the location was a stamp and scrapbooking shop, which means they'll be building the restaurant from scratch—something Dyer says is a lot easier and more expedited in the smaller town of Beaverton than in Portland.
When you visit the permitting office in Portland, Dyer says, "there's probably 100 people and it's chaos, you put your slip in the box….I went to the Beaverton one, and it's just one person. You go chat with them and it's real mellow. It's a totally different experience. They're so rational: You ask them a question, and they're like, 'I'm sure we can figure that out.'"
But there's one piece of bad news for Big's fans in Portland. If you want those thighs for now, you're going to have to go west. Laurelhurst Market will not host a smoker out front this summer.
"Parking-lot chicken is done," Dyer says. But plans for a Big's in Portland aren't done either: "We'll get through this first one in Beaverton, we'll see what comes next."