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Park Slope’s Pecking House Is Closing Tomorrow
Photo: Jutharat Pinyodoonyachet
Tomorrow will be the last day to get a chile-chicken sandwich and dirty fried rice at the Park Slope location of Pecking House, the Sichuan-meets-southern fried-chicken spot — at least for a while. Rumors started bubbling up this week that the restaurant would close because of a rent dispute, but it sounds like something more complicated is afoot.
“I’m not in a position to say what is going to happen to Pecking House B.K.,” chef and owner Eric Huang says. “What I can say is that we are being closed for construction required by our landlord.” He says it’s an issue related to the fire code and that he finds it “highly improbable” the repairs will be done in a month, as he’s been told: “I am unsure for how long this closure will be for, and I am unsure if we will reopen after closure.”
Pecking House was first launched as a pandemic pop-up by Huang, who ran it out of his uncle’s closed Chinese takeout restaurant in Flushing. It became the hottest bird of that weird moment, the sort of high-low balance that New Yorkers eat up: a former sous-chef at Eleven Madison Park putting his fine-dining pedigree to work on a down-home dish, making something out of nothing after his plans to open a fine-dining restaurant were derailed by the pandemic.
The wait list eventually grew some thousands of people long; one of Huang’s early customers was his former co-worker Maya Ferrante, who came onboard to help him run the show. Some customers ended up waiting months to try the chicken, which was drenched in buttermilk and dusted with Tianjin chiles, Sichuan peppercorn, sugar, and MSG. In September 2022, Huang and Ferrante parlayed that success into the brick-and-mortar space on the edge of Park Slope and Prospect Heights with an expanded menu that included options like an oyster-mushroom po’boy. (Ferrante is no longer involved.)
Yet despite the lines that dot sidewalks all over town these days, the Pecking House queues down Flatbush, when they existed at all, were surprisingly manageable. Last August, Huang appeared to say as much when he spoke with Eater about the opening of a second Pecking House in Chinatown. The branding of the business — which he described as somewhere between “fancier sit-down fried chicken and, you know, Popeyes” — was “confusing to a lot of people,” himself included. The good news is that this doesn’t mark the end of Huang’s duck-fat–drenched chicken in this city. That second Chinatown location is staying open.
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