Philly’s Hottest Club Is a Members-Only Fried Chicken Joint

Chad Rosenthal’s Motel Fried Chicken will now be available at Mary’s Chicken Strip Club. / Photograph by Michael Persico

This place has everything. “Sexy hot honey.” Baseball hats that bear the legend “SOMO” (Sundays only, members only). A menu pun inspired by pubic hair (or lack thereof).

Yes, even Saturday Night Live’s Stefon couldn’t make up “Mary’s Chicken Strip Club,” a pop-up from chef Chad Rosenthal out of his newest Ambler restaurant, Mary. When Rosenthal announced it in late May, it sold out in just over 24 hours, with 100 founding members paying $50 for the exclusive right to order take-out buttermilk fried chicken sandwiches, crinkle fries, and chicken strips — a.k.a. “landing strips” — each Sunday.

“No walk-ups. Club members only,” the Mary’s Chicken Instagram proclaims. Which doesn’t stop people from sliding into Rosenthal’s DMs. “I’m still getting messages all the time,” he says. “‘How do I get in? How do I get a membership?’”

A longtime local and Upper Dublin grad, Rosenthal opened Mary in the fall of 2024. Before that, he was best known for Ambler stalwart The Lucky Well, which closed at the end of 2023. (The Lucky Well’s other locations in Philadelphia and Warrington are also gone.)

Photo courtesy of The Lucky Well

The Lucky Well was, first and foremost, a barbecue joint. But when the COVID-19 pandemic hit and closed all restaurants, Rosenthal began to specialize in fried chicken as a less labor-intensive and more take-out friendly option, which he dubbed Motel Fried Chicken. Demand was so strong, the restaurant quickly switched from buckets of whole pieces (which need more time in the fryer) to sandwiches. It even expanded to San Antonio, Texas, with a pop-up that turned into a full-fledged ghost kitchen and Goldbelly product. “Weird but true: The most puro San Antonio fried chicken sammie in town right now is an import from Philadelphia,” the San Antonio Express-News’s Paul Stephen wrote in February of 2021. The Motel pop-up also made it out to Chicago, L.A., and New York.

Rosenthal’s chicken was originally based on a recipe from Thomas Keller’s Ad Hoc, with a lemon, garlic, and fresh herb brine, plus highly seasoned flour. The inclusion of smoked — rather than regular — paprika is Rosenthal’s personal touch. He further established his clucking bona fides on a 2022 episode of Beat Bobby Flay, during which Bethenny Frankel tauntingly informed Flay it was the best she’d ever tasted. (“I can die happy now,” the Real Housewife said after mock-collapsing to the floor.)

When the Lucky Well reopened for in-person dining, the chicken sandwich stayed. But it wasn’t on the menu at Rosenthal’s latest restaurant, a smaller gastropub-type spot (albeit without a liquor license). “When I opened Mary, people asked for it every day,” he says. “‘Where’s the fried chicken sandwich?’” It came back for another Motel Fried Chicken pop-up in mid-May. And then Mary’s Chicken Strip Club opened on June 1st.

A sandwich from Motel Fried Chicken’s San Antonio pop-up / Photograph by Wyatt McSpadden

A little after 5 p.m. that Sunday, Warrant’s “Cherry Pie” and Mötley Crüe’s “Girls Girls Girls” — both from a pre-existing Spotify playlist called “Strip Club Classics” — blasted through Mary’s empty dining room as plastic clamshells of chicken and French fries made their way from the kitchen to a bagging station to the bar, where members also got their black-and-gold promo hats and numbered membership cards. Rosenthal greeted customers familiarly as they arrived; most already knew him from the Lucky Well, though some had not yet been to Mary.

“The chicken sandwiches at Lucky Well used to just be off the hook,” says Christian Badali, a divorce attorney who lives in Skippack, but works nearby in Blue Bell. “Getting the chicken sandwiches back is a big part of it.”

Another member, Rob Hassler, lives close enough to Ambler’s Butler Street main drag to walk; he and a neighbor each brought along their kids. On the way, they discussed how fun it was for their suburban borough to have a miniature version of a Philly private club experience, à la Palizzi Social Club.

It is a take-out only operation, but you can also bring the chicken to one of several nearby bars. Kandy Pottschmidt, who lives in Collegeville, was already a Mary customer. She and her husband ate theirs at Forest and Main, just two doors down, then grabbed a four-pack of beer for home.

While the exclusivity of Mary’s Chicken Strip Club makes for a good hook, the membership model also stems from practical realities. Mary is only open for full service four days a week (Wednesday to Saturday); the pop-up is a streamlined way to both feed its regulars and generate more business. There’s one dedicated chicken cook, one part-time server, and a theoretical capacity of just five orders every 15 minutes, which are filled between 4 and 8 p.m. “We’re only working with one fryer, and we’re dredging all this stuff fresh to order,” says Rosenthal. “It’s a whole thing.”

Photograph by Michael Persico

Orders must be placed online by 6 p.m. each Thursday, which allows Rosenthal to order the exact amount of chicken that he needs. The boneless, skinless breasts arrive on Friday, get brined until Saturday, air-dried until Sunday, and then dredged and fried during the pick-up slots. So, the lack of walk-ups isn’t just about, “Sorry, you’re not a member.” It’s more like, “Sorry, we have no extra chicken.”

And even if they did, they don’t have time to cook it. In theory, the club can accommodate as many as 80 orders over those four hours — though if a single member orders half a dozen sandwiches, that’s bound to slow the place. On June 1st, there were a little more than 50 individual transactions. The club’s membership is also slightly larger than 100 to accommodate a small number of VIPs (which, full disclosure, included Philadelphia magazine to do this story. We paid for the food and tip). Assuming the initial pace of orders slows eventually (do people really want to eat fried chicken every Sunday?) the club could potentially add new members (hey, even Palizzi does it).

It may or may not be “the world’s most tasteful strip club,” as the Mary’s social media branding calls it. But the chicken’s definitely tasty: hot, tender, and juicy with a crackling crust, kissed with Kewpie mayo on a Martin’s potato bun, and piled high with thin-sliced, house-made pickles that are more on the dilly/Jewish deli side than the sweet/southern side. At a price point of $13 for the sandwich, Rosenthal knows it has to live up to the hype.

“It’s not a cheap sandwich,” he acknowledges. “You can go to Chick-fil-A and get one for, I don’t know, six?

“But not on Sunday.”