You could say this pair of 28-year-old friends are obsessed with chicken. Dan Koslow and Andrew Harris have been binge cooking it for the past three years to get the breasts and thighs just right for their soon-to-debut casual restaurant. Farmbird is set to open in early June on the ground floor of the Anthology Apartments (625 H St. NE).

“It’s a very personal menu,” Koslow says. “Almost everything on our menu is associated with a food memory that we had.” Highlights include chicken smothered with chipotle masala sauce, a summer corn salad with pulled barbecue chicken, a spicy adobo chicken sandwich, and a side of smashed cucumbers in rice vinegar with toasted sesame oil and garlic. Koslow says everything is made from scratch.

But let’s get one thing out of the way—this isn’t a fried chicken joint. Rather, the star bird is brined with herbs and spices and roasted in a high-humidity oven with even more herbs. The thighs get a little extra TLC because they’re seared to order to crisp up the skin.

Koslow says that he and Harris spent three years getting the day-long cooking technique down, and two years determining where they could source antibiotic-free, humanely raised birds. They’re using Coleman Natural and Bell & Evans. 

The college-friends-turned-business-partners dreamed up Farmbird while working office jobs in New York City—Harris in finance and Koslow in software development. “We were both working a lot and eating lunch and dinner at our desks,” Koslow says. “We were both getting fat and feeling like we were usually choosing between satisfying but unhealthy lunches like a burger and fries or something healthier, but where the chicken wasn’t thoughtfully cooked or the meal wasn’t super satisfying.”

So they quit their jobs, moved to D.C., and scored early encore careers in food. They started testing their concept by catering meals out of Union Kitchen‘s NoMa location until they secured a location for a brick and mortar Farmbird. Harris says the duo “fell in love with H Street” where they’d go out for meals after a shift at Union Kitchen.

When the 32-seat restaurant opens it will operate from 11 a.m. to 10 p.m. daily. Check out the menu below.

Farmbird, 625 H St. NE; (202) 733-4952; farmbird.com