By David & Susan Greenberg
Legend has it that notorious bank-robber, John Dillinger, once escaped from prison by carving a potato into the shape of a gun, dyeing it black with iodine, and brandishing it at guards who flung open the doors. This gives Chicken and Guns in Gales Creek distinguished precedent for nicknaming their potatoes, guns. Theirs are baked potatoes though, broken into chunks and deep fried until their salted skins are crackly, so delicious with slivers of pickled onion (kissed by mustard seed and coriander) and baptized in their Peruvian Aji sauce, they might also sway a prison guard to wave you through.
This is the company’s first stand-alone. Opening our car doors, our nostrils quivered at the scent of oak woodsmoke and we entered with an anticipatory step. If the food was as good as this place smelled, tasty stuff was nigh. The interior looked as though it was designed by someone with happy memories of summer camp, lots of varnished wood and long tables.
Sired by food trucks, Chicken and Guns is a narrow-bandwidth restaurant, true to its roots. Better to do a few things very well than many things pretty well. The menu’s mainstay is, of course, chicken. You can order a portion of a chicken or the whole beast smoked and roasted. James Beard said that the most difficult dish to cook well is roasted chicken. Chicken and Guns splits the arrow. Dark meat and white meat are moist, the skin salty crisp. You can have wings smoked and deep-fried, also moist and crisp. The Aji sauce – which looked and tasted luminous green – is an ideal foil. Their Smoked Chili Mayo and Garlicky Sweet Chili sauce are less interesting. But their Chimichurri – in the style we’ve had it in Uruguay, more a vinaigrette than an emulsion – sings.
Steak (and peppers) came medium, perfect for Susan but overcooked by my lights. The menu said the steak was flank, but it was some other cut. Depending on which of us you ask, it was either top cabin or top truckstop.
We were in complete agreement though, that their cheeseburger – craggy and just shy of carbonization, pickled and lettuced – was stupendous. All the subtle elements that make for excellence were aligned. We like to gnaw one as we drive coastward.
We salute the Peruvian rice-bean-lentil-corn bowl called Tacu Tacu with chicken, pork belly, and an orange-yolked egg. The rice mixture was beguiling, chewy almost. The pork belly was a culinary phenomenon, charred, yet moister than an oyster, extravagantly delicious, though it would have been more delicious yet with a crackling rind. You can get it as an optional side for a number of dishes and we always will from now on.
Shishito peppers, available at one meal but not another, were blistered perfectly.
Their waffles (guns) are prizefighters with such luscious heft you can’t figure out how they were made. No machine you’re familiar with could stamp them out. Mixed berry jam adhered them to the plate.
We split a standard mimosa. However, this is food made for beer and we segued to sturdy Pfriem pilsners. Our son had a Honey-Jalapeno-Shrub Soda which he liked but we felt was gimmicky, one of those culinary hacks that are so prevalent online and irk us, as though all of cuisine is a TikTok trick. Our pup, a snobbish epicure, sat out back with us along with a number of other family curs, and approved of all scraps. She asked for a beer but they ran her license and brought water.
Though you both loved the burger and Susan loved the steak, this is really a restaurant for a very specific letch – smoked, perfectly cooked chicken and guns – that only this restaurant, no other, can satisfy. It reminds you of the restaurants in Hong Kong that sell only a few very specific fabulous dumplings or noodles, that’s it, people lining up to get in. It’s in an odd location, west of Banks on Hwy 6, necessitating a long drive for most which, out of a sense of civic responsibility and self-preservation, restrained our bibulous impulse. Notwithstanding, we like it so much, we’ve gone often.
Service was notably warm. Though perhaps they don’t have quite the staff to handle folks out back.
Currently they’re open Friday through Sunday, 9 – 9, but when they bring it up to flank speed, it will be open six days a week.
We’re not certain how to interpret this but our dog wants to go on a walk. She’s whining and pacing and is brandishing… a gun.
The Ardent Gourmet highly recommends Chicken and Guns.
Located at: 55660 NW Wilson River Hwy, Gales Creek, OR (well worth the drive!)
If you’d like to see more of our reviews or contact The Ardent Gourmet, please see our website at www.ardentgourmet.com
