- Credibility:
LINCOLN SQUARE — Budlong Hot Chicken’s Lincoln Square location — which abruptly closed in September — will reopen next year, its owner said.
Jared Leonard, the restaurant’s owner, told Block Club he aims to have the location at 4619 N. Western Ave. return to its previous hours and menu by Jan. 1.
On Sept. 25, neighbors walking by the Western Avenue restaurant noticed boxes full of kitchen supplies stacked haphazardly inside the storefront’s window. Tables and chairs had also been either removed and pushed to the side and the business hours have been removed from the front door.
The following day a note was posted on the door that said, “Thank you for your business! It is with a heavy heart that we must close this location.”
The week before the abrupt announcement the business had still been promoting brunch at its Lincoln Square restaurant.
“We just had to do a little reorganization in our restaurant group and reallocate some resources,” Leonard said. “We’ll be back at our Western address very soon.”
However while Budlong’s Lincoln Square location is set to reopen next year, the restaurant group’s BBQ Supply Co. in Rogers Park at 6954 N. Western Ave. closed this week.
Back in 2010, the Rogers Park restaurant opened as Rub Backcountry Smokehouse and eventually changed its name to BBQ Supply Co. in 2017.
The location near Indian Boundary Park featured a distinctive “PIT BAR-B-Q” red neon sign that lit up Western Avenue at night.
“We had a great run at this location — but it just wasn’t sustainable in my absence: this was a passion project we built from absolutely nothing, but it launched a whole restaurant group,” Leonard wrote in a lengthy post to Facebook on Tuesday.
“So right now were still opening [BBQ Supply Co.] restaurants in Hyde Park and we’ve got one out in Denver, Colorado now,” Leonard said. “But as for the one in Rogers Park, we had a great run for eight years and it was just time to move on to other projects.”
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