Gallery: A Beer Hall-Fried Chicken Joint Is Downtown Detroit's Latest Offering

Josh Pickard

Josh Pickard, a Huntington Woods native and a University of Michigan alum ('81) living in New York, is no stranger to the frenetic restaurant biz. After college and adventures in Los Angeles, he began owning restaurants in New York. It started in 1990 and eventually he joined two partners to form NoHo Hospitality Group.

As it became increasingly expensive to open new places in New York, they started looking at secondary markets like Baltimore, Miami, Nashville -- and now Detroit.

"New York is a place you've got to have money," says Pickard, the son of a cardiogist who treated players for the Tigers and Lions many years ago. "In Detroit, you just need a great idea."

Pickard, who has a master's of business administration degree from the University of Southern California ('89), owns 16 restraurants with partners Andrew Carmellini (a James Beard Award-winning chef) and Luke Ostrom.

Now, they've joined with Shinola Hotel and Dan Gilbert's Bedrock for new ventures in downtown Detroit. In December, they opened San Morello, an Italian restaurant in the hotel. In January, they opened a cocktail lounge at the hotel called the Evening Bar. (Blended Scotch is $15 a glass.)

And on Monday, they plan to launch the newest venture: The Brakeman, a cavernous beer hall that includes games like foosball and beer pong, along with a fried chicken stand, Penny Red's that offers buckets of fried chicken, fried chicken sandwiches and sides like coleslaw, fries and to-die-for biscuits dipped in honey and butter. The place is down Parker's Alley from the hotel at Farmer and John R. It connects to the hotel on the second level, where there's a ballroom and banquet facility.

For the NoHo Hospitality Group, it's their first venture into non-fine dining.

The concept works like this: Buy chicken at a counter, take a beeper and return to your table in the beer hall until it's ready to be picked up.

The recipe for the chicken is a variation from one first created at The Dutch, a New York restaurant the NoHo group owns. Pickard explained that the name Penny Red's comes from "Henny Penny" pressure cooking fryers and Rhode Island Red chickens they use.

The beer hall, which serves local and regional brews, and the chicken joint, had a preview for family and friends on Thursday and Friday nights to give the workers an opportunity to get it right for the Monday opening.