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A pair of tongs dips a piece of fried chicken into a vat of red sauce.
The chile fried chicken that started it all.

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Pecking House, the Pop-Up With a 10,000-Person Waitlist, Spreads Its Fried Wings

Eric Huang, a former sous chef at Eleven Madison Park, finds a home for his chile fried chicken in Brooklyn

by Luke Fortney
Photography by Adam Friedlander

Pecking House, the fried chicken pop-up that once had a waitlist just shy of 10,000 people, opens its permanent home at 244 Flatbush Avenue, on the corner of Saint Marks Avenue, on September 9. The Park Slope restaurant is the first from Eric Huang, a Taiwanese American chef who cut his teeth at Eleven Madison Park before launching the business out of his family’s restaurant in Fresh Meadows during the pandemic. “Kind of like the Bear,” he says, nodding to the hit Hulu television show with an uncanny resemblance to his own life. He’s been running the pop-up with Maya Ferrante, a former chef at the Michelin-starred Gramercy Tavern, where the pair met in 2015, and one of Pecking House’s earliest customers.

Huang and Ferrante are opening the Brooklyn restaurant after a two-year pop-up run that took them to three boroughs, four restaurants, and the depths of a Lower East Side food hall. Customers have learned to line up early, suggesting that this city’s appetite for fried chicken seasoned with Sichuan peppercorns, Tianjin chiles, sugar, and MSG may just be beginning. “It’s something that’s never really existed before,” Huang says, a response he’s offered in various interviews over the last two years. He’s noisily dissecting a whole chicken into nine parts in the background of our call. A few minutes later, he’s interrupted by one that starts to sizzle in the fryer. Maybe that’s just it. By now, this chicken mostly speaks for itself.

Read on for more about Pecking House and take a look at the menu below.

Chef Eric Huang stands in front of a concrete chicken at his newly opened Brooklyn restaurant, Pecking House.
Eric Huang started Pecking House as a fried chicken delivery business out of his family’s restaurant in Fresh Meadows.

You’ve run your pop-up from four restaurants in three boroughs. How’d you settle on Park Slope?

It was a hell of a journey. It took us forever to find a space. It was the fourth place we negotiated, and it needed a lot of work. I’m not a very seasoned Brooklyn resident. I’ve only been living here for about two years, but this corner felt great. We’re right on the Flatbush artery next to Barclays Center. There are a lot of restaurants popping up here.

Pecking House started as a takeout and delivery business. What’s the vibe here?

It’s going to be counter-service with takeout and delivery, but I don’t see this ever becoming a Chipotle or a Shake Shack. We want to keep this a neighborhood spot. If there’s lines, that’s great, but it’s pretty humble. I mean the fried chicken comes on a paper plate. It isn’t very serious — but also, it is. The space is a bit more polished and the food has a ton of thought and training behind it, even if it doesn’t look that way.

There’s a giant concrete chicken on that wall.

That’s right. The concrete was poured wet, and then we had someone free-hand draw a chicken in it. [Editor’s note:  According to Ferrante, the big clucker is meant to evoke the Pecking House brand without having those words written all over the business “like other fast-casual restaurants.”]

Is there anything on the menu that we haven’t seen at the pop-ups?

The fries with roast chicken salt have never seen the light of day. We dehydrate onions and use bouillon powder and vinegar powder, and then we season them up. You can get sauces separately. Our “Alabama white” barbecue sauce is basically horseradish mayo: We add white truffle pate and white truffle oil to it, then season it with horseradish juice and lemon ($8).

Wait, didn’t the combo meal used to come with three pieces of chicken and three sides?

I was cooking this three piece-three side thing forever, and then I actually sat down and ate one around six months after we started. I was like, “Holy shit. This is a lot of food.” Now that we have our permanent home, two pieces and one side is going to be the standard. It’s the right amount of food to not leave you feeling like total shit after.

The fried chicken comes in three flavors — “naked,” salted egg yolk, and the chile fried chicken that started it all. What am I ordering?

I have come to really like the naked, almost a little bit more than my first child. We started it because there are people out there who can’t handle spice. I don’t think our chicken is super spicy, but there’s some people who literally can’t handle any. It’s dusted with a little bit of our five spice blend, salt, and vinegar powder. [Editor’s note: The three flavors cost the same, but mixing them in a single combo meal won’t be allowed.]

One more thing: How much chicken are you making on opening day?

I’m not really sure. We’ve been working with one to two fryers for forever now, but here we have three fryers. It’s the most we’ve ever had, so that definitely makes things easier. I think we’ll start with 100 to 120 orders as we usually do. We’ll see how that goes.

This interview has been edited and condensed for length and clarity.

A fried chicken sandwich is stacked on parchment paper on a red cafeteria tray.
Add foie gras to the fried chicken sandwich for $8 more.
Three pieces of fried chicken are topped with salted duck yolk.
Fried chicken comes in two sizes: Two pieces with one side ($18) and three pieces with two sides ($27). Pictured here is the salted duck yolk flavor.
An overhead photograph of a tray of fried chicken on a red cafeteria tray beside sides of vegetables.
The original chile fried chicken.
Three pieces of fried chicken sit in a paper boat on a red cafeteria tray.
The “naked” fried chicken with five spice, salt, and vinegar powder.
An overhead photograph of the orange wings at Pecking House.
The orange pepper “wet wings” with a side of dirty fried rice.
A sandwich with fried oyster mushrooms and tomato is strewn out on a sliced hero roll in a paper boat on a red cafeteria tray.
Behold, the oyster mushroom po’ boy ($16).
An overhead photograph of a plastic container with heirloom tomatoes.
All of the sides cost $7 each. Pictured here is the tomato and tofu salad.
An overhead photograph of a bean salad topped with pieces of cilantro.
Heirloom butter beans with sesame and cilantro.
The mashed potatoes with duck gravy.
Mashed potatoes with duck heart gravy.
An overhead photograph of a plastic container filled with slices of cucumber.
Charred cucumbers with ginger.
Outside of Pecking House, a fried chicken restaurant in Park Slope from chef Eric Huang.
The sign above the restaurant’s front door went up a day before its opening. “It was down to the wire,” Huang says.

Pecking House is open Wednesday to Sunday from 5 to 10 p.m. The restaurant will open for breakfast and lunch soon, with daily service to follow.

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