New Mark Jones restaurant to open next month in downtown Columbus

Columbus restaurateur Mark Jones is going after the downtown Columbus fried chicken market.

He plans to open The Poultry Company early next month in the 1200 block of Broadway where he operated Philly-osophy: The Art of Cheesesteak before closing it in late July.

“It’s going to be bone-in fried chicken and wings,” Jones said Thursday morning.

The fried chicken recipe will be the same as Mark’s Pies and Thighs, a chicken and pizza restaurant in Cataula. That restaurant was a 2017 Columbus Ledger-Enquirer Reader’s Choice winner for Best Fried Chicken along with Minnie’s Uptown Restaurant and Publix.

Fried chicken restaurants are trending throughout the country and Jones is banking on picking up some of that market in Columbus.

“It is going to be fried chicken with a curve ball from time to time,” Jones said. “We may have baked chicken or chicken dumplings on the menu as a special. But when we first open, we are going to concentrate on perfecting what we do.”

The Poultry Company will have sides such as mashed potatoes, succotash, pea salad, coleslaw and vegetables that will rotate. There also will be a dipping sauce that will go with the friend chicken and wings, Jones said.

“It is going to be sweet, tangy with a little heat, but not too much,” Jones said.

The restaurant is currently being remodeled and Jones’ wife, Sheri, is decorating it, as she has done with all nine of his local restaurants.

Philly-osophy The Art of Cheesesteak, in the 1200 block of Broadway, closed for remodeling and rebranding. Jones moved the three most popular Philly-osophy menu items — the original, triple pepper and the dipper — to Flip Side Burgers & Tacos, a Broadway restaurant Jones owns one block north.

Jones also owns Smoke Bourbon and BBQ, Black Cow and Plucked Up Chicken and Biscuits in downtown Columbus. In addition to Mark’s Pies and Thighs, he owns two Ready, Steak, Go takeout restaurants, Mark’s City Grill and Hunter’s Pub in Harris County.

The Poultry Company will be open Monday through Saturday and closed on Sundays. Smoke, a barbecue restaurant at the corner of 11th Street and Broadway, is the only downtown restaurant Jones owns that is open in Sundays. It is open from 11:30 a.m. to 5 p.m. on Sundays, serving brunch until 2:30 p.m.

This story was originally published September 14, 2017 at 12:31 PM with the headline "New Mark Jones restaurant to open next month in downtown Columbus."