Chicken and Guns is a restaurant with two locations in theU.S. state of Oregon. The restaurant operates afood cart inPortland, and thebrick-and-mortarSmokehouse Chicken and Guns opened inGales Creek in 2023. The food cart is slated to close permanently on December 28, 2025.
Chicken and Guns is afood cart atCartopia, located insoutheast Portland'sBuckman neighborhood.[1] The business specializes in grilled chicken with Latin spices.[2] The "guns" are baked, then fried potatoes, rubbed with lemon and oil and drizzled with aji sauce.[3][4]
The restaurant group Title Bout partnered with Chicken and Guns in 2017, and planned to open five locations over five years.[5] The restaurant used approximately 750 whole chickens per week as of 2017.[1]
In 2018, co-owner Dustin Knox wasplaced on leave after asking an African-American patron to leave for "loitering," leading to the restaurant being accused of racism and receiving numerous negative reviews.[7][8][9][10]
Thebrick-and-mortar restaurant Smokehouse Chicken and Guns opened with an expanded menu inGales Creek in 2023.[11] In December 2025, Knox announced plans to stop operating the food cart on December 28, choosing to keep focus on Smokehouse Chicken and Guns.[12]
Chicken and Guns was named a food cart of the year byWillamette Week in 2016.[13] The business also ranked among Portland's top 40 food carts, based onYelp review data in 2016.[14] Pete Cottell included Chicken and Guns inThrillist's 2018 list of the city's "most delicious" food carts.[15]
Krista Garcia included Chicken and Guns inEater Portland's 2021 list of ten chicken-and-jojo "champs" in the city, writing, "With wood-fired whole birds and dips like chimichurri and habanero carrot sauce, this Hawthorne food cart doesn’t exactly do traditional chicken and jojos. But the 'guns' in question, crispy potatoes, seasoned with lemon and sea salt, and served with pickled onions and creamy Peruvian aji sauce, are a welcome alternative to the usual."[16]
Media related toChicken and Guns at Wikimedia Commons
