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Food
Restaurant critic checks out fried chicken in D-FW
03:21 PM CDT on Thursday, March 27, 2008
The list of foods seared into the American consciousness as ours, as near-universally accepted and unshakably patriotic, is actually rather short.
Burgers lead the roster. Pancakes and barbecue follow. I'd argue that ice cream ranks higher these days than apple pie. And though its Italian origins will probably never recede fully into the melting pot, we've permanently adopted pizza as our own.
Then there's fried chicken.
Those two words together evoke, for most of us, a common sequence of images and cravings: The crackly coating, either thick or sheer, cooked to a radiant shade of brown. The plunge, leveraged by both hands, of the first bite and the subsequent dribble of salty juice. Lively discussion with family and friends about the moistness of the meat and the seasoning in the crust. Greasy fingers. Lots of napkins. And then on to the side dishes ...
But despite (or in addition to) all its nostalgic clout, fried chicken continues to evolve on several levels. The preparation of fried chicken, like many of our culinary touchstones, is leaving the province of our mothers' and grandmothers' kitchens. Don't strike up a requiem just yet, though.
The restaurant industry has, in the past decade, increasingly assumed the care and feeding of fried chicken's legacy. Sure, it's a fast-food staple. But fried chicken, in sundry variations, is also served with reverence in every stratum of the dining community. And not just at American eateries, either.
Over the last month, I visited nearly 30 Dallas-Fort Worth area restaurants that serve fried chicken. The range of styles and settings in many ways reflects national trends and attitudes toward the browned bird. Chicken-fried steak will always be the king of battered proteins in Texas, but the diversity of local fried chicken reveals an enduring love for this dish, past and present. It also offers a taste of its multicultural future.
Cultural collisions
The menu affixed to the counter at Plus One Chicken gets right to the point: fried chicken with sauce or without? Hot or mild?
We'll take some of each.
And by sauce, I know the restaurant isn't referring to chicken smothered in gravy. This is Korean fried chicken. I'm anticipating something with a little more nip.
Plus One Chicken, formerly named Youjin, resides in a shopping center on the stretch of Royal Lane heavily populated with Korean businesses. It may currently be the only place in Dallas proper that specializes in this particular brand of Seoul food.
The woman at the counter who took our order delivers our food to us in the restaurant's wood-paneled jewel box of a dining room (the very antithesis of the quintessential American chicken shack). Fried rice comes with the chicken, as does an iceberg-lettuce-heavy salad with a ranch-style dressing.
We dig right into the plain fried chicken. It's fresh from the deep fryer and scorches our fingertips, but we persevere. The pieces, coated with a medium-thick batter that has solidified into ripples over the surfaces, are cut into small, oblong pieces rather than distinguishable anatomical parts. Many of them contain both white and dark meat, both of which are cooked evenly.
But the flavor leans toward bland. Even the so-called spicy option leaves more of a faint halo of heat in the mouth, rather than a good capsicum thwack. I've been to some Korean restaurants where the fried chicken comes with a condiment of salt, pepper and sesame seeds for dipping. That doesn't appear to be an option here.
A sweet and spicy glaze douses the sesame-seed-flecked sauced chicken. It's tingly, this saucy addition, but it becomes cloying after too many mouthfuls. This presentation's most intriguing aspect: Interspersed among the pieces of chicken are small, spongy rice cakes that have an odd but addictive texture somewhere between gnocchi and marshmallow.
We finally arrive at a rewarding formula. A bite of the sauced chicken followed by a few chomps on the plain version creates an agreeable balance on the palate.
This is not the type of challenge typically faced by devotees of Southern fried chicken. Then again, fried chicken has achieved such global appeal that its once-exclusive dominion has now been wrested from the tongs of Southerners.
Pollo Campero, a Guatemala-based fried chicken chain rampantly popular in Latin America, started in 1971. It boasts outposts in 11 countries and is continuously making headway into the U.S. market. Texas has six branches, including one on Northwest Highway.
Campero's selling point is its chicken's smooth, greaseless batter, which proved to be the case even on a recent rainy night when the restaurant was uncharacteristically slow. Chipotle salsa retrieved from the complimentary salsa bar brought a frisky dimension to my half-gnawed drumstick, though I have to confess that the most revelatory flourish was also the simplest: I squeezed lime over a chicken breast and was taken aback by how the citrus juice freshened and lit up the other flavors.
A Pollo Campero hasn't yet opened in the Dominican Republic, though that country maintains its own rendition of fried chicken, called chicharron de pollo. The dish traveled to other Caribbean food cultures as well, and you can taste a Cuban riff on chicharron de pollo, in the form of crunchy chicken wings served with guava sauce, at the newly opened La Cubanita in the Knox-Henderson neighborhood.
Ajisen in Richardson offers tatsuta-age – Japanese fried chicken so densely breaded it resists sogginess even when submerged in ramen. Zyka, also in Richardson, serves Chicken 65, an Indian appetizer wherein skinless chicken chunks are marinated in ginger-garlic paste, coated with seasoned cornstarch, fried and finally scattered with green chiles, cilantro and curry leaves.
I'm sold on the idea of ethnic fried chicken, though I can't bring myself to wholeheartedly endorse the above two innovations. Both have culinary merit and are worth noting in a comprehensive meditation on fried chicken. But here's the thing: They're boneless.
Tweak the marinade, the coating and the type of fat in which you fry the chicken all you want. But I'm among those sticklers who believe deep down that you need to leave the bone attached to the meat to truly label the effort in question fried chicken. Otherwise, things start to drift dangerously into cutlet or, worse, nugget territory. (And we'll leave chicken-fried chicken for another jaunt.)
Out of the frying pan
In my rulebook, then, one significant element of the family recipe that chef Kent Rathbun serves at Jasper's almost fails to qualify as fried chicken. He debones the breast for his "Grandma Minnie's fried chicken," which is offered on the restaurant's Saturday and Sunday brunch menu.
"It's something I've done since my days of cooking fried chicken at the Mansion," says Mr. Rathbun. "We do it as a convenience for the guests."
At least he leaves the wing bone attached to the breast, which positions the hunk of meat squarely between finger food and knife-and-fork fare. While I can certainly admire the propriety of the gesture, fried chicken, to me, is meant to be eaten in hand.
And this is one rewarding plate of chicken, some of the best I found on my search.
Mr. Rathbun's method, which he learned during his childhood in Kansas City, Mo. (one of the country's recognized fried chicken meccas), could hardly be more straightforward. Forgoing any marinade, he dredges the chicken pieces (breast, drumstick, thigh) twice in a flour mixture spiked only with salt, pepper and garlic salt, and then fries them in canola oil in a 22-inch cast-iron skillet. Once the chicken reaches a lustrous bronze, flour and whole milk are added to the emptied skillet and the remaining drippings to make gravy, which is finished with a splash of maple syrup. The three pieces are presented atop a mound of mashed potatoes with a restrained moat of the gravy underneath.
Mmm. This chicken has the kind of coating that snaps satisfyingly in your mouth before dissolving into a peppery memory. It melds with the skin without crumbling off in crunchy chips. The meat is lush.
Jasper's both bucks and exemplifies some of the prevalent schools of thought toward fried chicken served at finer dining restaurants, a phenomenon that is occurring more and more across the country.
While cooks in other cities tend to tinker with preparation techniques (one chef, John Fleer, brines his chicken in sweet tea!), Dallas chefs seem more inclined to act as ambassadors of tradition. Like Mr. Rathbun, Dean Fearing prepares pan-fried chicken at his restaurant. I was disappointed with "Granny Fearing's paper bag shook" fried chicken, which is served solely on Sundays, when Fearing's in the Ritz-Carlton opened last fall. But a recent return visit found the gospel bird much improved: A lacy, well-seasoned exterior gave way to plump meat beneath. The overt smokiness in the tomato gravy on the side had been tempered. The accompanying "all day green beans" were thoroughly infused with bacon and cooked, in good Southern fashion, to the consistency of butter.
True, at $32, it's the city's most expensive platter of chicken. But I nibbled those bones bare.
That Mr. Rathbun and Mr. Fearing both pan-fry their chicken reflects a worthy development among many chefs taking up the fried chicken cause. Pan-frying, in commercial kitchens, is a rare art these days: It's more time-consuming than deep-frying and requires a different skill set.
"It's a feel," Mr. Rathbun says in describing pan-frying. "It's something that you have to work through two or three times. Even after years of seeing it done by my parents and grandparents, it took some missteps before I got it right."
Both nationally and locally, chefs who pan-fry tend to offer it as a special on one designated day a week. One nearby exception is Rick's Chophouse in McKinney. Chef Brian Sommers takes his cues from highflying Georgia chef Scott Peacock's recipe: a day of brining, another of soaking in buttermilk, and then pan-frying in lard buoyed with ham hock. Mr. Sommers triple-coats his chicken, though, in alternating layers of buttermilk and seasoned flour, which surrounds the pieces in a rust-colored parcel that breaks off in flaky, not-too-greasy chunks with a fleeting porcine aroma. Little wonder it's one of the restaurant's best-selling dishes.
Personal tastes
And, really, who doesn't love the crunchy, flaky, not-too-greasy bits? Heck, go on and make 'em greasy, we'll chow down anyway.
Even one of my vegetarian editors, while reading this story, commented, "I have to admit that the coating on fried chicken is something that I do miss from my meat-eating days."
Maybe that's why nearly everyone with whom I discussed fried chicken in Dallas proselytized about Brothers Fried Chicken on Gaston Avenue. No arguments here: Brothers is all about the crunch.
Steve and Jimmy Kazanas have done a fine job upholding the lineage of two temples of fried chicken. Brothers is located on a former site of beloved Henderson's Chicken Shack, and the recipe it uses is based on the one served at the defunct Leslie's in Waco. (Steve Kazanas tells me his brother's godfather grew up with the people who ran Leslie's and passed on the secrets.)
The Kazanases use an egg-based, wet-style batter to deep-fry their chicken. Bite off a morsel, and while your lips are tingling, take a close look at the chicken: That batter shimmers with dots of spice, the way a pointillist painting does when you put your nose up to it. It recalls Old Bay seasoning – celery seed, paprika, maybe something sweet like allspice? I can't be sure: Nobody at Brothers will talk.
"So, did you love it?" several folks asked after I'd been to Brothers.
"Yep," I'd answer. "It's good stuff. I'm glad I asked for the pickles. I liked the way they cut through the fat and salt."
Conversely, it could be a little heartbreaking when a recommendation turned sour. One friend suggested I meet her at Massey's, a home-cooking institution in Fort Worth. While we waited, she regaled me with stories about coming here during her college days and how this fried chicken was the perfect hangover cure. She hadn't been in years.
We both blinked in surprise after the chicken arrived. It had no gumption, flavor-wise.
"I remember the gravy being thicker," she added. Nonetheless, she gamely gussied up the bowl of gravy with salt and pepper. It did help.
On other outings, opinions with my cohorts differed. At Big Mama's Chicken and Waffles on the corner of Forest and Audelia, for example, two of us snagged the last of three concrete tables set up outside this drive-through-only restaurant. I was enamored with the aggressive seasoning in the batter, similar to Brothers'. And I'm a sucker for chicken and waffles, a sweet-and-savory combination I grew to love at Gladys Knight's restaurant in Atlanta.
"The meat doesn't have enough flavor," my friend countered.
Same deal at Cooppie's in Garland. My tablemate complained that the chicken wasn't crisp, but I pointed out that the white meat was particularly succulent and that the restaurant uses hormone- and antibiotic-free chickens, a laudable rarity. And waffles are served here, too.
Some encounters along the tasting trail were unequivocal letdowns, most of which resulted from overcooking. The fried chicken we received at Dixie House in Lakewood was so frizzled the manager noticed our quarter-eaten plate and gave us a 25 percent discount. The chicken at Nate's in Addison, which is cooked to order and can take 30 to 40 minutes to arrive, also verged on burnt.
One hopes for consistency in restaurants of any kind, though the realities of cooking (and sometimes holding) large quantities of fried chicken mean that a great experience and a mediocre one can be a matter of when you show up.
Or sometimes it's just an enigma. My notes on lunch at Bubba's Cooks Country enthused rhapsodically: "juicy, juicy dark meat; crust had a delicate nature and was revved with something akin to lemon-pepper, not too salty." But at the Garland location of Babe's Chicken Dinner House, which is owned by the same folks who run Bubba's and purports to follow the same recipe, my reaction was decidedly less keen: "Crazy crisp and dark but lackluster on the seasoning. Meat is dry." What to say?
All food is personal, but fried chicken seems more so. Maybe it's the intimacy of eating with our hands. It also, I think, circles back to our early experiences. If you subsisted on Popeye's through grad school, you'll probably hanker forevermore after those crackly, battery specimens. If your grandma fried floured pieces of chicken in her blackened skillet on Sunday evenings, the cheffy efforts to preserve that lineage might make you misty.
In the grander scheme, fried chicken also unites with a sense of community. At Celebration on Lovers Lane, at Vern's and RJ's Crustaceans in Deep Ellum, at Paris Coffee Shop and Drew's Place in Fort Worth and at many other of the restaurants previously mentioned, I witnessed some of the most racially diverse groups of customers to be found in North Texas.
That's the kind of food-centric patriotism I hope our enduring devotion to fried chicken continues to foster.
For my bird-brained expedition, I visited each restaurant once during prime lunch or dinner hours and sampled both white and dark meat. (For restaurants with more than one location, only the one listed was visited. Ubiquitous fast-food chains were not included in the search. Favorites are listed alphabetically.)
BROTHERS FRIED CHICKEN 4839 Gaston Ave. 214-370-0800.
This is the Promised Land for fried chicken lovers who covet thick, crunchy batter. Pronounced, but not overly aggressive, spicing adds extra zing. Be sure to request the complimentary pickles and peppers. The restaurant is primarily a drive-through, with only four seats at an inside counter.
BUBBA'S COOKS COUNTRY 6617 Hillcrest Ave. 214-373-6527. www.bubbascatering.org.
Another standup example of crisp, rippled batter, though lighter in color and more restrained in spicing than Brothers'. Dark meat proved exceptionally moist. Friendly staffers at the counter and in the dining room.
CELEBRATION 4503 W. Lovers Lane. 214-351-5681. www.celebrationrestaurant.com.
The restaurant serves fried chicken Sundays, Mondays and Tuesdays. Crackly, midweight coating has a pleasant, gentle sweetness. Best news for chicken gluttons: Servers are happy to bring out seconds (or thirds, even).
DREW'S PLACE RESTAURANT 5701 Curzon Ave., Fort Worth. 817-735-4408. www.drewsfortworth.com.
The chicken was fried to order, which took about 20 minutes but yielded superb results: The white breast meat was the most lavishly juicy found during the search. All pieces verged on being oversalted but didn't quite cross the line. Nice pepper bite to the sheer crust.
FEARING'S 2121 McKinney Ave. 214-922-4848. www.fearingsrestaurant.com.
"Granny Fearing's paper bag shook" chicken is served Sundays only. Lovely example of homey pan-fried chicken, not excessively crisp but with a paper- thin coating married nicely to the skin. Subtly smoky tomato gravy on the side.
JASPER'S 7161 Bishop Road (in the Shops at Legacy), Plano. 469-229-9111. www.jaspers-restaurant.com/plano.
More old-timey pan-fried chicken, in the best possible sense, served during Saturday and Sunday brunch only. Big flakes of black pepper dominate the spicing in the filmy coating. Meat was uniformly cooked and not greasy at all. A truly satisfying plate of gospel bird.
PARIS COFFEE SHOP 704 W. Magnolia Ave., Fort Worth. 817-335-2041.
The restaurant employs an interesting technique for its Friday lunch-only fried chicken special. It previously pan-fried, but demand required faster technique, so now the chicken is fried at lower temperatures in the deep fryers for a hybrid effect. Nice light, nubbly coating. A buttermilk bath gives the meat welcome tang.
RICK'S CHOPHOUSE 107 N. Kentucky St., McKinney. 214-726-9251. www.rickschophouse.com.
Chef Brian Sommers also pan-fries, but his brined and buttermilk-soaked chicken has a thicker, crunchier veneer than Fearing's and Jasper's. He fries in ham-hock-flavored lard, so it has a wonderfully bacony essence, too. It's a crowd-pleasing amalgamation of modern and more traditional tastes.
SWEET GEORGIA BROWN BAR-B-QUE BUFFET 2840 E. Ledbetter Drive. 214-375-2020.
Good, basic, hits-the-spot fried chicken. Seasoning was simple and direct, the pieces were covered in envelopes of cornflake-crisp batter, and the encased meat retained its moisture beautifully. Classic Southern side dishes were stellar.
AJISEN (for Japanese tatsuta-age) 400 N. Greenville Ave., Richardson. 972-792-8888. www.ajisentx.com.
BABE'S CHICKEN DINNER HOUSE 1456 Belt Line Road, Garland. 972-496-1041. www.babeschicken.com.
BIG MAMA'S CHICKEN AND WAFFLES 9810 Forest Lane. 214-340-3035.
BREAD WINNERS 3301 McKinney Ave. 214-754-4940. www.breadwinnerscafe.com.
COOPPIE'S AMERICAN SCRATCH COOKING 4280 Lavon Drive, Garland. 972-530-8200. www.cooppies.com.
DIXIE HOUSE CAFE 6400 Gaston Ave. 214-826-2412.
GOLDEN CHICK 14430 Marsh Lane, Addison (see Web site for additional locations). 972-406-9799. www.goldenchick.com.
HIGHLAND PARK CAFETERIA 1200 N. Buckner Blvd. 214-324-5000. www.highlandparkcafeteria.com.
KEL'S RESTAURANT 5337 Forest Lane. 972-458-7221.
LA CUBANITA (for chicharrones de pollo) 4444 McKinney Ave. 214-520-0100. www.lacubanitadallas.com.
MASSEY'S 1805 Eighth Ave., Fort Worth. 817-921-5582.
MECCA 10422 Harry Hines Blvd. 214-352-0051.
NATE'S SEAFOOD 14951 Midway Road, Addison. 972-701-9622. www.natesseafood.com.
PLUS ONE CHICKEN 2240 Royal Lane. 972-488-9100.
POLLO CAMPERO 3071 W. Northwest Highway (see Web site for other locations). 214-358-5200. www.campero.com.
RJ'S CRUSTACEANS OF NEW ORLEANS 2711 Elm St. 214-747-0900.
SOUTH DALLAS CAFE 3126 Grand Ave. 214-428-8898.
VERN'S PLACE 2807 Elm St. 214-823-0435. www.vernsdallas.com.
WILLIAMS 4875 Sunnyvale St. (see Web site for other locations). 214-375-5055. www.williamsfriedchicken.com.
ZYKA (for Chicken 65, an Indian appetizer) 100 S. Central Expressway, Richardson. 972-238-7777. www.zyka.com.
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