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The city was electrified when chef Eric Huang, formerly of Eleven Madison Park, pivoted his family’s long-running Queens restaurant into an “underground” fried chicken purveyor last year.
Formed by force of necessity, Huang’s pick-up and delivery-only operation was so clucking exciting, in fact, that the desire for Pecking House’s set menu of three pieces of buttermilk-brined and fried D’Artagnan chicken, plus three sides for $35, grew from a couple dozen orders in one weekend, to hundreds, to a weeks-long waitlist thousands of people deep before too long.
Starting this weekend, the wait is over. Pecking House will open a physical location at The Market Line on Saturday, May 8.
The brick and mortar menu will include chili fried chicken finished with Tianjin chilis and Szechuan peppercorn, and sides like asparagus with XO Sauce and gribiche, crushed new potatoes with green garlic and butter bean salad with cilantro and sesame. A peanut butter pudding with chocolate ganache is on the dessert menu.
Prior to repositioning the family business and cementing his spot at the Lower East Side marketplace, Huang was formulating plans to open his own new restaurant.
“I had Michelin stars in my eyes,” he said last October. “It was a singular focus. This year has me thinking: ‘Maybe that stuff isn't so important anymore.’ It has me realizing that it was very self-ego driven. This is more about being part of the community and making people happy.”
While you can still request a spot on Pecking House’s pick-up and delivery waitlist, the opening of its outpost at The Market Line is poised to make a lot more people very happy.
The Market Line is located beneath Essex Market at 115 Delancey Street. Though some vendor hours vary, it’s open from 11am-8pm Wednesday through Saturday, and 11am-6pm Sunday.
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