Tireless Josh Henderson Drops Two More Restaurants on SLU

The relentless Josh Henderson/Huxley Wallace Collective train keeps rolling with the opening of two new eateries: Poulet Galore and Cantine Bar and Bottle Shop. They’re in the same building as wood-fired Vestal, which opened last month with Henderson himself returning to the kitchen.

Poulet is a lunch-only, weekday-only rotisserie chicken walk-up window. Its menu is online now, a concise selection of whole, half-, or quarter-chicken with six flavors like ancho or nuoc cham. Add sides like chicken fat-roasted potatoes, jasmine rice, and pinto beans, or try the chicken sandwich on griddled sourdough. There’s also a Caesar salad, a couple of sweet treats, and even roasted bone broth for drinking.

If you don’t want to walk down to the lake with your takeout, you can eat it at Cantine, a beer bar with a casual vibe. Catch a Seahawks game on one of the massive TVs, get a draft beer from a rotating selection of great local breweries like Holy Mountain, Burdick, or Seapine, and relax. Beverage manager Andy McClellan, who oversees all of the restaurant group’s bar programs, said the house will even buy you a drink if you bring an album to spin on the record player — presumably just one drink per visit, though you can bring a whole stack of tunes if you want.

McClellan said the bottle list is where the beer selection gets nerdy, with the kind of obscure stuff you see more in retail shops than in bars: limited-batch American and European offerings from importers like Shelton Brothers and BPI. Just want a cheap can? There’s a Montucky Cold Snack for that. There’s also a handful of wine choices and a simple selection of cocktails, mostly bucks like a dark and stormy or a Moscow mule plus a house-juiced Bloody Mary.

As far as the "bottle shop" portion of the name, McClellan said Cantine was originally meant to be like a mini-Chuck's Hop Shop, but now the retail component is limited. You can take any bottles from the list with you, and he's putting together six-packs to go and ordering growlers, but he admits there will be a slightly higher markup than in a typical take-home setting because Cantine isn't a retail store. A nanobrewery concept was once floated for the space, too, but that idea's been scrapped.

Aside from the Poulet chicken, expect beer-friendly food at Cantine: not necessarily healthy, but fairly inexpensive, hearty, delicious, and well-made, according to McClellan. That currently includes a porchetta sandwich, chicken-fat french fries, a fried bologna sandwich, and the coup de grace, a frito pie with black bean puree, oxtail and ground beef chili, sharp Tillamuck cheddar, pickled serrano peppers, and sour cream, all atop house-made fritos. "Basically we make masa and push it through the pasta extruder and it makes these perfect little frito shapes, then we fry those," McClellan explained. Americana upscaled.

Poulet Galore: 513 Westlake Ave N, (206) 456-2770, website. Open Monday to Friday 11 a.m. to 2 p.m.
Cantine: 513 Westlake Ave N, (206) 456-2550, Facebook. Open daily 11 a.m. to 10 p.m.