Preservation owner adds Atlas Chicken Shack to Geneva eateries

GENEVA – Even after running the successful Preservation Bread & Wine restaurant at 513 S. Third St. in Geneva for the past six years, owner Lawrence Colburn said he still wanted to do more.

About 18 months ago, he bought the building at 511 S. Third St. – just one gangway over from Preservation – and recently opened it as Atlas Chicken Shack.

“I have been looking at it from Preservation and looking at it and thinking, ‘What’s that old building look like? What does it want to be?” And I just felt it wanted to be a chicken shack," Colburn, of St. Charles, said. "I’ve been looking at it for six years, since we opened [Preservation] over here. It was really the feel, the look of the place.”

The building is narrow, more than 100 years old and small – less than 400 square feet, Colburn said.

The building had previously housed Kernel's Gourmet Popcorn, which moved to 316 S. State St. in 2011, and then Smuzi Juice Bar was open in 2013 and closed in 2015.

“The building is full of character – there’s something about the old, broken crookedness of it,” Colburn said. “It’s just a really, really cool old building. Getting fried chicken in there has certainly been a challenge.”

Even the name – Atlas – refers to the point specific location of the building in the Great Lakes region.

“We wanted to emphasize it was down here at the tip of Lake Michigan – Chicagoland,” Colburn said.

The building is too narrow and small for inside seating, so a half-dozen tables and chairs dot the paved gangway between the two buildings. Customers can pick up food from an order window that opens onto the gangway and either take it away or eat it there.

Atlas Chicken Shack uses free-range, hormone- and antibiotic-free birds hatched, raised and processed from Miller Poultry, an Amish farm in northwest Indiana. They are soaked for 24 hours in a seasoned buttermilk brine before being dredged, re-dipped, re-dredged and then fried.

“It is 100 percent our recipe from the ground up,” Colburn said. “It’s very well seasoned, without being spicy.”

The chicken shack had a soft, unadvertised opening on July 1; then it was forced to close from July 6 to 11 because it ran out of chicken, reopening July 12.

Not only was the demand beyond expectations, getting the chickens from Indiana required a five-day lead time, Colburn said.

“These are not mass-produced chickens that we can get from anywhere,” Colburn said. “We were forced to start over because the initial response was so strong.”

Still, Colburn said it was not so much a problem as a puzzle to be solved.

“It created a certain puzzle that we are working on daily,” Colburn said. "And we are going to make this the absolute best piece of chicken you can find."

The menu offers chicken both fried or grilled, on a salad or a bun or in a box, with a traditional cole slaw or a brussels sprouts-citrus slaw, made with shaved sprouts, red onions, jicama and toasted pepitas. It also offers four original house-made sauces and dill pickles and pickled onions.

More information is available by calling 630-457-5540 or visiting www.atlaschickenshack.com.