[Pigging by Wilfrid: June 6, 2016]
The hot weather arrived, along with the Memorial Day weekend, and a craving set in for classic American picnic food. A pilgrimage was in order, to some of the city's established casual fried chicken vendors. And here's the belated verdict.
I do mean casual. Scoffing the bird as part of a full meal, as at The Redhead, for example, or Momofuku Noodle Bar, didn't fit the schedule. We wanted places where you could grab a few pieces, and primarily traditional US-style. Although it was revealing to throw in one Korean ringer.
Dirty Bird To Go, on West 14th Street, was brought to us as long ago as 2006, by Allison Vines-Rushing and Slade Rushing, recently chefs at the bijou Jack's Luxury Oyster Bar. No pretence to luxury at DBTG--basically a bare shop-front with minimal seating--although service was sweet as iced tea,
The chicken was tangy from the buttermilk brine, the coating on the double-fried pieces was darker than any outside Korea-town. Generally it adhered well, but when it did fall off, I found myself scouting the pieces in the bottom of the basket to eat them. Mildly seasoned, by fried chicken standards. Two pieces for $7 was good value, especially as one was massive (entire breast); and they threw in some deep-fried cornbread, which I found too greasy.
Blue Ribbon Fried Chicken at the bottom of Second Avenue couldn't be mistaken for any of the competition. It has a matzo meal crust, well seasoned, which is certainly crunchy, but which paints your fingers with a kind of reddish powder. Looks like you've been messing around with annato paste or eating bags of Doritos. Not that this makes the chicken bad; just the experience a little odd.
Add the emphasis on flavored honeys (the chipotle is still the best; I could taste no wasabi in the wasabi), and it's certainly a distinctive take on the dish. You can order by the piece: a breast and thigh would cost over $9, which makes it pricier than DBTG. We got a thigh and a drumstick for around $7.
Hill Country Fried Chicken perhaps suffers by comparison with Hill Country BBQ--the best in the city when it opened. There are two versions of the dish on sale here, Classic and Mama El's. The former (floured and seasoned) has a "shake and bake" taste to it, and is best avoided; but it does no harm to the latter, which has a crisp, flaky, but adhesive batter. My deputy junior assistant observed, correctly, that the seasoning was unevenly distributed around her piece: there was visibly a lot of pepper on the bony underside of the thigh. For her a deal-breaker, although again I'd warn of batch variation.
The price is about the same as Blue Ribbon FC.
I threw in a Korean ringer, partly out of curiosity, partly because the junior under-assistant hadn't tried the genre before, and partly because it was just up the street. Kyochon and Bonchon are practically adjacent options on Fifth Avenue, in the shade of the Empire State. I hadn't been to this branch of Bonchon before, and it turns out to be a cool, sleek, shady, full-service bar and grill. No by-the-piece here; if anything, the menu is angled towards large (up to 30 piece) platters to accompany TV sports and copious cold beer.
We couldn't do that, but found a small drums and wings combo ample enough. Indeed, it would make a light lunch for two people who weren't planning to visit half a dozen fried chicken joints. The coating was by far--not even close--the crispest, crunchiest we faced on this trip. Full marks. The chicken itself was sort of strangely dark. It tasted kind of ripe, if you know what I mean. Not bad, just full-flavored, possibly because of a brine or marinade. The best bites--possibly the best bites on the whole trip--were the so-called "drumettes."
Downsides: I guess you could ask them to hold all sauce, but otherwise chicken comes with soy garlic or spicy coating. I just find the saucing little cloying after a while. Also: no thighs.
Imagine no thighs at Pies and Thighs in Williamsburg. Imagine no pies. Don't worry, they had plenty of both. No ordering by the piece at this busy little dining room, but in addition to chicken with biscuit or waffles or in a sandwich, you can get three pieces in a box for $14. That also buys you a choice of one side and a biscuit; a fair price for more food than we needed.
Frustrating in a way, because I thought this was easily the best chicken of the day. As in meat, flesh, whatever it is that poultry carries on its bones. No buttermilk here, but a salt, sugar and spice brine, which delivers rich, pink, meaty flesh. But where's the crust. There wasn't much of it adhering to the pieces, and what there was wasn't very crunchy. Again, maybe it was the batch. The junior deputy under-assistant averred that it was a great biscuit, for what it's worth: supremely buttery.
Apologies to Bobwhite on Avenue C, which is where we'd have finished up, had the sub-under-deputy showed sufficient fortitude. The biscuit finished her off. I've eaten there often enough to know it's very good, but it would have been interesting to do an instant comparison.
Oh yes, the verdict? There isn't a piece of fried chicken on the list which comes top in all categories. If I could take Bonchon's crust and wrap it around Pies and Thighs' meat--hold the sauce--I'd be happy. But really, on a sunny day, there's nothing here I wouldn't eat again.
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