New Joliet Restaurant: 400 Free Half-Chicken Meals On Easter

JOLIET, IL — On Easter Sunday, the Joliet family who own the Supermercado grocery store at Collins and Cass streets will open a new restaurant next door, at 351 E. Cass St. To mark the special occasion, Alex Sanchez and his family will be giving away 400 — that's right — free half-chicken meals which include two sides, tortillas and salsa.

The name of the restaurant, El Gallo De Acero, that means "The Chicken of Steel" or "Steel Chicken," explained Sanchez, who graduated from Joliet Central High School, where students are known as The Steelmen.

Starting Easter Sunday, the new restaurant will be open seven days a week. The restaurant has a full dining room, but Sanchez expects most people will probably order takeout. It will be open from 10 a.m. to 9 p.m.

"It's not Mexican food at all," he said. "It's grilled chicken."

A copy of the entire menu is posted at the very bottom of this story.

"It's more like a Popeye's," Sanchez said. "It's a really limited menu."

The entire menu is geared around chicken, chicken and more chicken.

And of course, there's chicken wings, too.

"The main thing will be chicken, grilled, fried, roasted," Sanchez told Joliet Patch's editor during Thursday's interview inside the soon-to-be opening restaurant.

"Sunday, we are going to cook 200 chickens and cut them in half, so I think we'll be able to serve 400 families. I feel we needed some type of chicken restaurant on this side of town, and we sell a lot of chicken across the street (at Supermercado)."

Sanchez said the new restaurant's name has historical significance to Joliet's history of being a steel city.

The sprawling Joliet Central campus is roughly two blocks away from the new restaurant.

"The city of Joliet used to be big on steel," Sanchez remarked.

People on the east side of Joliet, Sanchez said, do not have a Sam's Club store where they can buy whole chickens at an affordable price.

Joliet's east-side used to have several chicken restaurants, but the KFC closed a few years ago on Collins Street and so did the Church's chicken. A Popeye's did open on East Cass Street a couple of years ago at the former Checkers.

"On this side of town, nobody does rotisserie chicken," Sanchez said. "Nobody does grilled chicken that I know of."

And with so many Joliet area families on a tight budget because of inflation, Sanchez said, "I think chicken, being your most economical, you can feed two people for $13.99 with two sides."

As for the different varieties of chicken at "The Steel Chicken,"these are never frozen, and it's not spicy, and we don't add extra sodium," Sanchez explained.