(Image: Google Maps)
Capitol Hill food and drink is up to its elbows in chicken these days but we’re still going to miss Bok a Bok. After a nine-year run next to Neumos, the Hill’s original Korean fried chicken joint has closed permanently.
The shutdown comes after a long closure for critical emergency repairs and structural damage in the floors directly beneath the cook line inside the more than 110-year-old Pike/Pine auto row-era building in a space that has suffered through the pipeline pains of deep frying for at least twenty years.
“Damage was substantial and lots has happened with our lives since the floor debacle so we are not going to be able to continue our Bokin` adventure,” owner Brian O’Connor said in an update to friends shared on social media.
CHS talked with O’Connor about the extensive and expensive construction job in January as he was hoping to get the busy counter spot back in motion. The Bok a Bok work also meant a few weeks of downtime for the Neumos underground sibling Barboza.
I turns out, Bok a Bok Capitol Hill’s final crispy chicken was served last October. RIP.
O’Connor opened the first location in White Center and expanded with new locations but the 10th Ave restaurant sandwiched next to Neumos at the corner of 10th and Pike had become the only remaining Bok a Bok in the city.
Its Capitol Hill space was previously home to the much-hyped but underwhelming arrival of the Paseo chain on Capitol Hill. Before that, it was home to Pike Street Fish Fry before it closed in 2015 after a near eight-year run.
Anything that might come next will face some expensive infrastructure repairs.
As for chicken, the neighborhood flock of choices has grown exponentially. The latest Pike/Pine poultry addition will come on 11th Ave where influencer chef Matt Broussard and the Bellevue-based Conscious Hospitality Group are teaming up to open Char the Chicken, a “fire-grilled rotisserie chicken” concept replacing, yes, sustainable chicken sandwich joint Mt. Joy. Bock a bock, indeed.
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