PG Clucks has long been considered one of Toronto’s best spots to get your chicken fix, and now, after a decade, it’s turning off its fryers for good. The restaurant announced yesterday that its tiny College Street counter closed immediately, while the larger Queen St W location will keep frying until July 25.
When Clucks first opened, the goal was to sell a sandwich, a side and a drink for $10, but now the numbers no longer work.
“The reality is that we can’t continue to offer our huge sandwiches at current prices, and we’re not interested in selling takeout chicken sandwiches for $15+,” owners Pawel and Steph Grezlikowski said in an Instagram post on Thursday. “We were Toronto’s very first dedicated fried chicken sandwich joint, we introduced the city to Nashville Hot Chicken, and we’re humbled to have inspired a whole generation of chicken spots that followed. But after a decade at the fryers, the time has come for us to move on.”
PG Clucks opened its original College St shop in 2016, packing an entire fried chicken operation into a roughly 200-square-foot space with no seating (genius, since the low overhead allowed the owners to sell a sandwich and pop for under $10). The restaurant eventually outgrew its little window and opened a second, larger space on Queen St W in 2021, giving the team more room and a bigger menu, while the College Street location stuck to its tiny takeout format.
And for a while everything worked. The chefs prepped their chicken with deboned leg meat that was brined for 24 hours in lemon and herbs, soaked in buttermilk for another six hours and double-dredged for extra crunch. The restaurant became known for huge pieces of juicy-crispy fried chicken that spilled out from their buns, including the sweet-and-spicy Jalapeño Honey and the Big Cluck, a deliciously messy fried chicken riff on a Big Mac!
The end of PG Clucks doesn’t mean the College Street space is going dark, though. The tiny shop is becoming Loomi Pita Bakery, or what the owners are touting as the world’s smallest pita bakery. According to Pawel and Steph, the new concept better reflects the current economic reality and where they are now as chefs. At Loomi, Torontonians can look forward to organic, long-fermented sourdough pitas baked to order throughout the day and filled with fresh ingredients and housemade sauces, alongside salads and dips to go.
In the meantime, if you still need a chicken fix, head to PG Clucks’ Queen St. location (1112 Queen St W) before July 25.