Fox & Bow reveal their Side Chick: old-school takeaway energy, gourmet chicken and sides coming to Phillip

Posted on 13 August, 2026

Get ready for a revolutionary approach to take-out, where one of the city’s most beloved chefs melds gourmet ingredients and culinary technique with “fast” food.

Fun, cheeky, young and unpretentious, Side Chick is opening next week (Wednesday 19 August) in Phillip after years of dreaming, planning, building, and taste-testing.

Not trying to be a glossy fast-food chain or a supermarket chook in a plastic bag, Side Chick is aiming for something warmer – an old-school takeaway shop where families can grab dinner, young people can get something hearty after the gym, and hospital staff finishing a long day (or an even longer night) can find something wholesome, flavourful and ready-to-go.

But mostly, Side Chick promises flavour and technique you simply don’t get from Colonel What’s-his-name or that other burger place.

Because the chef behind the rotisserie is Alex Piris. Best known to Canberrans through Fox & Bow and Bravo at the Red Hill and Farrer shops, and former eateries such as Manolo’s in Phillip and Deep Dish in Manuka, Alex’s food has always had a certain pizzazz and generosity to it – big flavours, proper ingredients, a little Spanish soul and the sense that someone in the kitchen actually cares whether you leave happy. That same spirit is now being applied to chicken.

It’s an obsession that has been passed through the family. Alex has always loved charcoal chicken, and when he was a child visiting Spain with his family, the simple protein stirred a passion. His own son Jack has inherited the obsession and is a big part of running the business. Alex’s wife Nicole, meanwhile, tries to keep Alex’s feet tethered to the ground, but he is not the sort of person who can leave a simple idea alone.

Nicole and Jack have had to gently rein him in from trying to offer a smorgasbord at Side Chick – every sauce, marinade, special, more than a dozen different sides and salads – when the aim is to offer six.

Alex has been experimenting with his own take on Chicken Rice and has endlessly been tweaking aromatics for a curry in which to marinate his birds.

“He really wants to offer the world,” says Nicole.

Hand-cut chips? Of course. Potato scallops? Naturally. Salads with pomegranate, beetroot, lentils, seeds and the sort of detail usually reserved for a long lunch at a starred restaurant? Absolutely, if Alex has his way. Side Chick might be designed as a grab-and-go chicken shop, but the food ambition behind it is anything but basic.

The menu is built around rotisserie chicken (and make those extra-large and juicy organic ones please), but this is not a one-note operation. Think brined birds, crispy schnitzel rolls, gravy rolls, burgers, fresh salads, roasted vegetables, creamed potato, potatoes catching all the good chicken drippings, everything cooked with the care that makes a takeaway dinner feel like a small event. There will be crunch. There will be sauce. There will, almost certainly, be someone in the car eating chips before they even make it home.

The salads are where that care becomes especially obvious. Alex understands that not everyone in a family might eat chicken, so he aims for the vegetarians to go home feeling excited. There will be salad bowls you can build from up to six different options, depending on what colourful, textural and flavour profile Alex is keen on that week. You can add some haloumi, or grilled mushrooms or roasted vegetables for added oomph. It means Side Chick can still feed the whole family without anyone feeling like they have drawn the short straw.

And a visit to the shop promises proper takeaway nostalgia. The space is designed to feel like a clean, bright, friendly milk bar-style stop-in – easy to understand, easy to use and a little bit cheeky. Come in, grab your chicken, get a coffee if you need one, maybe add a salad so you can call it balance, and off you go.

And yes, coffee matters here. Side Chick is not treating it as an afterthought, which will be welcome news for nearby workers, parents doing the school-and-life juggle, and anyone emerging from the hospital precinct in need of caffeine and something better than whatever they were about to settle for. There will be a coffee tap for instant pre-batched espresso any way you like it using Melbourne Roaster Axil, and in what we believe will be a Canberra first, Side Chick will also serve matcha on tap.

To the delight of locals, Side Chick will be an all-day affair, offering a breakfast menu which includes classics like sausage and egg muffins, egg and bacon rolls, and hash and avo rolls.

Because the Woden area is full of people who need food that is fast but flavourful (hospital and emergency staff – all of whom will get a discount if they flash their ID), prices are pitched to keep families, hungry teenagers, tradies, and apartment-dwellers coming back for more.

Which brings us to the name. Side Chick is memorable, a little naughty and impossible to confuse with anything corporate. It suggests cheating on your usual takeaway, but in the least guilty way possible: with real chicken, good salads, hand-cut chips and enough seasoning to make the supermarket roast look very sad indeed.

It also feels like the natural next move for a team that understands suburban Canberra. Fox & Bow turned the Farrer and Red Hill shops into destinations for good food and communal outdoor charcoal-grilled lunches, which smell like a Spanish village in celebration mode. Bravo proved a simple idea can sing when the dough, toppings and wood-firing is just right, and Side Chick seems to be chasing that same sweet spot: familiar food, done properly, with personality (and let’s be honest, protein).

And finally, a word on dessert. What meal would be complete without it? Of course, takeaways don’t lend themselves to sweet treats of any note, but Alex has his head in the clouds (again). He’s wondering about a tray of freshly baked apple crumble, or a Basque cheesecake. But Nicole and Jack start rolling their eyes. Let’s just see what he comes up with when they open their doors on Wednesday next week.

So yes, it is a chicken shop. But it is also a promise – that takeaway can be clean, hearty, wholesome and fun, that you can procure comfort food in a jiffy, and that after a very long day, sometimes the most beautiful words in the English language are simply, “I’ll grab dinner.”