Mama Bird, a health-conscious chicken restaurant in Northwest Portland’s Slabtown neighborhood, plans to close this Sunday to install a $100,000 smoke “scrubber” in response to neighbor complaints, chef Gabriel Pascuzzi told The Oregonian.

Before opening near the end of September, Pascuzzi thought he had done enough to mitigate the smoke emerging from the restaurant’s centerpiece, an Argentine-style adjustable grill accessible to cooks on three sides. A large vent positioned above the grill carries smoke six floors up to the roof of the building, where it gets released more than 50 feet from the nearest intake.

But Pascuzzi started hearing complaints almost immediately after opening, first from residents of the Carson building, then from neighbors at the LL Hawkins, another new building across Northwest Raleigh Street from the restaurant. At first, he tried lower-cost options, including switching from white oak and alder to a cleaner maple and adding fire bricks around the grill to keep the fire from burning as fast.

“It was our first week, we’re burning off a new oven, we wanted to at least make sure everything was cured before we took any drastic actions,” Pascuzzi said. “You figure when you open a wood-fired restaurant, you’re going to get a few people that complain, it’s just in the nature of the restaurant. Then we heard from the landlord that more than a few people were complaining.”

Less than one month in, the restaurant has a 3.5-star rating on the restaurant review site Yelp, with many of the reviews noting smoke both in the restaurant and in surrounding apartments.

“This establishment is a bad neighbor,” user Amanda Catherine D. wrote on Sept. 30, “flooding the adjacent homes and properties with heavy smoke. They obviously have little regard for their employees and patrons, as the seating area does not provide adequate ventilation to make for a pleasant work environment, let alone satisfactory dining experience. Shut this place down. You can get a roasted chicken 50ft away at half the price. Why did the city permit this place to open for business?”

“The real problem of this restaurant,” user Ryan N. wrote on Oct. 15, “is that it is pouring smoke into the air around the neighborhood. I live nearby, and it is destroying my neighborhood and quality of life here. We can’t open our windows or smoke blows in. The smoke comes into the air handler for our building, which makes all our hallways smell. So even if we close our windows, the smell creeps under our door. It’s like we permanently live at a campsite.”

Pascuzzi expects the closure to last three weeks as workers install the scrubber, a system that uses water sprays and filters to remove particulates from the exhaust emerging from the smokestack. He says the system will cost approximately $100,000.

“It’s ironic,” Pascuzzi says. “Everything we use here in biodegradable. We try to cut down on packaging. We compost. We use the chicken bones to make the bone broth. We are very environmentally conscious. We’re trying to serve people healthy food, and we’re getting accused of trying to poison the neighborhood.”

Mama Bird: 2145 N.W. Raleigh St., 503-384-2064, mamabirdpdx.com

-- Michael Russell