The birds are smoking: Wooden you know it: the GTA’s best rotisserie chicken is cooked over cherry and oak logs in Thornhill.

A young Joe Boussidan earned the nickname of Joe Boo. Later, at a life altering moment when forced to choose between dueling food and printing careers, the Hamilton native launched a kosher chicken eatery with the image of a cuckoo clock in his mind. And so Joe Boo’s Cookoos was born in June 2004.

The restaurant, mainly takeout, with just a few spots to eat in-is outfitted with a 10-spit wood-fired rotisserie from an American company called Wood Stone. Boussidan traveled top the US with 3 kosher chickens jammed into his briefcase to test-drive a new demo model before deciding to buy it.

At first he was lukewarm to the taste of his demo birds, but 90 minutes later when pulling leftovers from his trunk “the aroma completely blew into my face, all the flavors had settled and it was the juiciest, most tastiest chicken I’d ever had”.

The aroma/taste sensation is recreated in Thornhill, where Boussidan has spent 2 ½ years perfecting the art of smoking chicken over a mix of quartered apple, cherry, oak, ash and maple logs. Also on the menu: steaks, burgers, hot dogs and chicken fillets/kebabs cooked on the rotisserie’s grill, deep-fried chicken wings ( the honey garlic works for me), Middle Eastern salads and a handful of sides.