About Restaurant Openings Around DC
A guide to the newest places to eat and drink.
Fancy Ranch Amish Fried Chicken at Union Market. 1309 Fifth St., NE.
The buttermilk fried Amish chicken with maple hoe cakes has been the best selling dish at Navy Yard’s Shilling Canning Co. since it was introduced to the menu more than five years ago. Now, chef Reid Shilling and his wife and partner Sara Quinteros are giving it star billing at a just-opened pop-up location in Union Market called Fancy Ranch Amish Fried Chicken.
“We have two kids, and between the pandemic and the economy and everything that’s happened the last six years, it’s been a learning curve and definitely a lot of challenging times,” Quinteros says. “Fancy Ranch is really bringing back that joy of why we love food, why we love cooking in a very approachable way.”
Shilling is staying true to his popular recipe. He sources whole birds from small Amish farms in Pennsylvania. They’re brined for 12 hours in sorghum, molasses, salt, lemon, garlic, and herbs, then soaked for 24 more hours in hot-sauce-spiked buttermilk before they’re dredged and fried. For a small upcharge, you can get the chicken drizzled in a housemade hot honey and sprinkled with toasted benne seeds and chives.
While Shilling Canning Co. serves its fried chicken with hoe cakes, Shilling has tweaked the recipe for Fancy Ranch to create a cornbread waffle smothered in maple butter using a very dark maple syrup from Lancaster, Pennsylvania. If you’re feeling fancy, you can also get smaller corn waffles paired with ranch sour cream and caviar. Caviar is also available by the spoon or “bump” if you want to add a taste to your chicken leg. Fancier still: “stir your bump of caviar into your ranch and then dip your chicken into it,” Shilling says.
Aside from the housemade ranch, other sauces include honey mustard, hot sauce, hot honey, maple syrup, and spicy, herbaceous aji verde—a nod to Quinteros’s Latin roots. Three sides include cole slaw, baked beans, plus an aji verde potato salad. Brunch brings fried chicken and waffle dishes topped with fried eggs and more.
Fancy Ranch is working to get its liquor license, but in the meantime, they’ve got fresh-squeezed lemonade, iced tea, and Arnold Palmers (which you’ll soon be able to get spiked). Coming soon: fruity, boozy slushies and bubbles.
The pop-up takes over a prime spot in Union Market that was previously home to Yasmine and Rappahannock Oyster Co. (Fancy Ranch will also be available for delivery.) Shilling says the lower overhead of being in a food hall will allow them to offer the chicken more affordably (up to $19.50 for a three-piece meal or $54.50 for a combo meal with eight pieces of corn waffle, two large side, and all the sauces).
Fancy Ranch currently has a three month lease in Union Market, but if it does well, Shilling says they’ll look to stay in the food hall or find a standalone location. “This is absolutely, in my mind, proof of concept,” he says.
Jessica Sidman covers the people and trends behind D.C.’s food and drink scene. Before joining Washingtonian in July 2016, she was Food Editor and Young & Hungry columnist at Washington City Paper. She is a Colorado native and University of Pennsylvania grad.
