Move Over Beef: A Chicken Smashburger Lands on Court Street
The Ample Hills Creamery founders trade scoops for sizzle with Ramblin’ Chick, a fast-casual concept built around crispy, house-ground chicken smashburgers.
There’s a new kind of smashburger sizzling on Court Street. Hint: It’s chicken.
Ample Hills Creamery founders Jackie Cuscuna and Brian Smith have traded scoops for griddles with Ramblin’ Chick, a fast-casual concept centered on chicken smashburgers. The Strong Buzz first reported on the project last summer. On Monday, signage went up at 512 Court Street ahead of the restaurant’s March 19 opening.
The menu features chicken smashburgers, mac and cheese, chicken nuggets with housemade sauce, kale salad, chicken chili and skin-on fries with seasoning, followed by soft-serve, shakes and floats for dessert. Prices range from $4.50 for fries to $11.99 for a double-stacked burger. The patties are made from Bell & Evans ground chicken, seasoned and marinated in-house. Nuggets are prepared from scratch rather than frozen. Soft-serve is made in-house, and shakes are hand-spun to order.
“The burger is one of America’s great culinary icons,” Smith said in a press release. After two years of recipe testing in pursuit of the ideal crispy, juicy chicken, he wondered whether the evolution of the American burger was chicken. “When you grind it fresh, season it boldly and smash it on the griddle until it crackles, something special happens,” he said.
Cuscuna and Smith largely renovated the space, a former sushi restaurant, themselves. Drawing inspiration from Woody Guthrie lyrics, Cuscuna described Ramblin’ Chick as “a celebration of American reinvention, Brooklyn spirit and the ever-winding road that connects us all.”
Cuscuna and Smith first made their name with Ample Hills Creamery, the Brooklyn-born ice cream company that grew into a multi-location brand with celebrity buzz before financial struggles, bankruptcy and investor clashes led to the founders losing their stake in the business they created. You can read more about that chapter via The Strong Buzz and more about Paulie Gee’s, soon to open in Ample Hills’ former Gowanus space, here.