WESTFORD — The farm-to-table restaurant Nan’s Kitchen will open its doors at Westford Valley Marketplace by the end of the year.
The restaurant is set to open in late November and will serve comfort food such as fried chicken, sandwiches, salads, sweets and vegetables.
“It’s just dinner, it’s not special occasion food it’s ‘I don’t want to cook, I’ve got all these kids from soccer practice,’ it’s ‘I don’t want to think about meal planning,’ it’s ‘I can have comfort food and health food at the same time in the same place,’” Founder Jordan Mackey said.
He said the restaurant was a “pandemic pivot” in 2020 after the closure of he and his wife’s previous restaurant, 209 Rustic Mediterranean. They named their new concept Nan’s to be synonymous with “going to your Nana’s.”
Much of the restaurant’s produce are from Boston Area Gleaners and Boston Food Hub, organizations dedicated to investing in Massachusetts farmers and supplying communities close to Boston with fresh food.
“I wanted to get out of the business that people would come to twice a year if you were lucky and start cooking food that people wanted to eat all the time,” Mackey said.
A place for the community
Mackey said he wanted to give the community a place that had good fried chicken but also supplied healthy side dishes. He said he and his wife wanted to start a fried chicken restaurant that would have “real scratch chef-driven side dishes, a place with soul.”
“KFC makes great chicken, they wouldn’t be who they are if they didn’t. Popeye’s makes great chicken, but they both have something in common, that everything else that they make is terrible,” Mackey said.
For those familiar with ordering fried chicken ahead of time at Nan’s, Mackey says he plans to experiment with on-demand ordering at the Westford location.
The Westford location will be their third restaurant followed by a fourth in North Andover next spring. Nan’s has two other locations one in Stow and the other in Southborough.
