As summer creeps into the District — or arrived rather abruptly over Memorial Day Weekend, as it happened — a new fried chicken restaurant with ice cold drinks and a backyard bar is promising to bring casual fun for everyone to typically swanky downtown D.C.
Enter Little Chicken, where Grazie Grazie owner and Taylor Gourmet co-founder Casey Patten has teamed up with dynamic chef-duo Gerald Addison and Chris Morgan of Bammy’s and formerly Maydan to bring fried chicken, frozen drinks, and frozen custard to the masses. Located in the Midtown Center development that’s also home to Dauphine’s and Shoto, the restaurant aims to bring an outdoor party to the complex.
When Patten started to think about the downtown fried chicken shop, he says, he considered three main ingredients: “Great chicken, great environment, and outdoor fun.”
And while the chicken is the shining star of the shop, the atmosphere will make anyone want to stay and hang out for the day. Graffiti-covered walls feeding into an outdoor corridor makes the space feel like you’re hanging out at a block party, except this party has bartenders slinging hand-crafted crushes and frozen pineapple daiquiris. There’s also a giant shuffleboard set up outside to keep guests of all ages entertained.
The menu includes a variety of bone-in fried chicken and chicken tender options that can be regular or spicy, several sandwiches, salads, and a slew of sides. And if poultry doesn’t fit into your diet, you can substitute fried oyster mushrooms on any of the sandwiches.
Patten, Addison, and Morgan take their fried chicken seriously. So much so, in fact, that they took a four-day road trip to Charlotte, Charleston, Atlanta, and Nashville and visited around 60 restaurants — from the new chicks in the coop to joints that have been serving customers for 50 years. Addison says he felt personally drawn to the older shops that know how to do food well, and have kept it simple as times continue changing.
“It takes a ton of work to consistently put out fried chicken,” Addison notes. “It’s so much harder than I ever expected.”
When they returned from their trip, they had exactly the background they needed to build their menu. One of the biggest takeaways? Include sides that don’t weigh people down as they’re taking down your fried chicken.
“One of the things that we like about our menu is that the chicken is here but we have a bunch of complementary sides that are bright and acidic and eat light,” Addison comments.
Those include a three bean salad, cucumber salad, broccoli salad, and coleslaw. And if a light side isn’t your thing, there’s always a classic mac and cheese, waffle fries, and biscuits. Addison, a once-skeptic of the traditional, mayo-based broccoli salad he first tried down South, claims it as one of his favorite sides on the menu now. The salad, with cheddar, dried cranberries, and a sour cream dressing, was derived from Morgan’s mother’s recipe, but adds pine nuts as a twist.
The backyard-party atmosphere continues with Little Chicken’s drinks menu, which their owners say they wanted to reflect something that they would drink in their own backyards. Veteran D.C. bartender Said Haddad. Delivered with crushable, ice-cold cocktails such as a Maryland-style Orange Crush made with vodka, fresh-pressed orange juice, orange cordial, and lemon-lime soda, as well as the Jungle Chicken, made with Jamaican black rum, american orange bitter, pineapple, and lime.
Speaking of neo-classical summer drinks, the restaurant is also offering their own homemade hard seltzers. In a market overloaded with hard seltzer options, Haddad wanted to do something different by offering a seltzer that actually tastes like real fruit rather than the artificial flavors often associated with canned hard seltzers. Currently, flavors of the housemade drinks include blackberry, watermelon, passionfruit, or calamansi citrus.
While Little Chicken may be one of the more casual undertakings from Addison and Morgan, they want to assure guests that serious cooking is happening in the kitchen.
“I would say that this prep menu is just as difficult as almost any other restaurant that I’ve worked in. If not harder in many ways,” Addison said. “Everything starts from scratch and is real.”
Little Chicken is located at 1100 15th St NW. It’s open Sunday-Thursday from 11 a.m. to 11 p.m. and Friday and Saturday from noon to 1 a.m.
