Proposition Chicken, the locally-owned, fast-casual restaurant is opening a new location in San Francisco’s West Portal neighborhood. Known for its high quality ingredients and culinary-driven recipes, Proposition Chicken offers affordable sandwiches, entrees, and salads with fried, roasted (flipped), and tofu (fake) chicken options. The new location will also be the first to open serving breakfast.
“We are so excited that we are coming to West Portal,” says Ari Feingold, Proposition Chicken’s Founder and Executive Chef. “Twenty years ago, when I first moved to San Francisco, West Portal was my neighborhood. We are absolutely humbled by the reception that we’ve already received and are so excited to be a part of this street’s next chapter.”
The new location is located at 16 West Portal Avenue, just across from the West Portal Muni Station. For this 3,000 square foot location, the largest yet for Proposition Chicken, the owners tapped Bay Area staple, Cookline Construction, and Jerome Tobias from the architectural firm Arcflux Studio. One feature that is sure to impress is the 550 square foot patio, complete with heat lamps and a working fireplace — one of the only patios to be found in the West Portal neighborhood. The brand’s signature neon chickens will once again be placed in prominent view.
Proposition Chicken has a complex culinary process more commonly found at formal dining establishments. Starting with free-range, air-chilled, chickens from Mary’s for all entrees, each bird is pre-salted for at least 24 hours. The chickens are then broken down with all butchering done in-house, and every part of the chicken is used: the chicken fat is used for chicken fat butter, the bones for matzo ball soup and bone broth, and the wings for the wing appetizer. If the chicken is being roasted, it is constantly basted and marinated. For fried chickens, Proposition Chicken uses a wet batter to which they add a touch of vodka. This creates their signature crunchy, juicy outer shell. Kale used in the salads is massaged with salt and olive oil to soften the leaves, enhance the taste, and make it easier to digest. Biscuits are made fresh each morning, and all sauces, spice blends, marinades, and dressings are made in-house.
“In my mind, what sets us apart as a brand is not only our commitment to quality and service, but also to keeping our prices affordable,” adds Maxwell Cohen, Owner and Chief Financial Officer. “It’s always been important to us that all of San Francisco feels welcome here. We survived COVID without laying off a single employee or significantly raising our prices. We will continue to operate in this manner regardless of what uncertainties are on the horizon.”
The menu is built around a choose-your-own dining experience. Customers first “choose their chicken”—fried, flipped (slow-roasted), or fake (crispy BBQ tofu)—then “choose their style”—sandwich, salad, or entrée. A sandwich comes with spicy slaw on a toasted hearth-baked roll, with a choice of house-made sauces; a salad includes kale, romaine, cucumbers, tomatoes, and parmesan cheese; and an entrée comes with a tomato and cucumber salad, and a buttermilk biscuit topped with honey butter. There are also wings, chicken strips, and sides—including brown sugar Brussels sprouts, homemade bone broth (cooked for over 24 hours), and matzo ball soup, inspired by Feingold’s mother’s recipe. In 2024, the restaurant also rolled out a breakfast menu which they first debuted at SFO.
The restaurant also offers Celiac-friendly, gluten-free fried chicken sandwiches that are prepared using tapioca flour. For those, Proposition Chicken uses separate cutting boards, toasters, tongs, and a dedicated fryer that gluten never touches. The bread for these rolls is from Oakland’s Mariposa bakery, an entirely gluten-free bakery. The restaurant also has an extensive wine and beer selection.
The first Proposition Chicken opened on Market Street in 2013, and moved its flagship location to Laurel Village in 2021. Owner Ari Feingold opened the original location after spending seven years building the food program at Outside Lands. He attended the San Francisco Cooking School and is responsible for all the recipes currently used by the restaurant. At the time of the original restaurant’s opening, his current partner, Maxwell Cohen, was the manager of Feingold’s former restaurant, the carnival-themed Hayes valley staple, Straw. The third partner, Elizabeth Wells, joined the duo in 2015, and is responsible for building out much of Proposition Chicken’s beer list. Wells was the owner of Southpaw, the barbeque and brewery on Valencia that closed in 2019.
With the new location, Proposition Chicken will employ a total of 91 employees, with 30% of those having worked for the company for more than five years. Many of their employees have risen through the ranks of the company including Jose Hoil, who will be the opening chef at the West Portal location. Hoil joined the company in 2018 as a line-cook at the original location.
There is an additional location on Oakland’s Lakeshore Avenue, and an outpost in the United terminal at SFO. Proposition Chicken also has a partnership with the VC-backed, Local Kitchens, of which they are in nine locations. Since 2016, Proposition Chicken has also donated 10% of all Monday dine-in sales to local nonprofits on a rotating monthly basis. To date, the restaurant has donated over $200,000 to local organizations. In addition to the monetary donation, the program brings attention to the incredible work of these local non-profits. The program currently exists at both the Laurel Village and Lakeshore locations and will launch in West Portal in 2026.
All Proposition Chickens locations are open daily from 8am – 9pm. They are open for dine-in, pickup, delivery, and catering.
