影片
更多
2016-05-20
3972 瀏覽
Some friends of mine and I were planning on having fried chicken Wednesday at the Butcher's Club Steak Frites, but apparently they have discontinued that (without updating their website, facebook, posters on their windows, etc.). Anyway, in need of fried chicken, and having recently tried the Roundhouse Chicken + Beer, we decided to give this place a go.The restaurant is pretty small. We went midweek and there was one table free the entire time we were there, but you should probably make reserva
The restaurant is pretty small. We went midweek and there was one table free the entire time we were there, but you should probably make reservations. There's live music, but it's really adds nothing of value. The playlist was what you'd get if you typed in Eagle-Eye Cherry, "Save Tonight" to Pandora and let 'er roll. Some of the songs are out of the singer's range, and the audio is terrible.
I should also mention that you don't put "po boy" in your restaurant name and then fail to sell po boys. Well, you do if you're this restaurant, I guess.
I arrived before my friends and got a champagne pink lemonade or some such. The cocktail menu lists 12 or so items, but they only "had" 4 of them. I don't know what they were lacking for the others-- the alcohol, the mixers, the garnishes-- or perhaps the bartender only knew how to make 4 cocktails. Really no clue, but it seems odd to be "out of" the majority of your menu items. Good lemonade though.
We got the chicken and the duck fat fries. That's two distinct menu items, so they don't arrive at the table together. The fries came first. Another reviewer complained that they were cold and soggy with no truffle flavor. I had the opposite experience. The fries were warm and crispy enough, and I could definitely taste the truffle. Unfortunately, I don't like truffle on my fries. The fries were fine though, definitely nothing special.
The chicken took forever to arrive. I made it to my second drink before then: I think it was called an Agave Sweet. I ordered it b/c it had jalapeno syrup and cayenne pepper and I like spicy cocktails. This was not noticeably spicy, and was far too sweet for my tastes. At this point, I had had half of the cocktails menu. Usually I'm more blitzed when that happens.
Finally, the chicken arrived. (We got 2 whole chickens for 4 people.) It was a spring chicken, as we could tell from the small amount of meat on the bones, and the reddishness of the meat. (Young chickens have permeable bones which leads to pigment in the marrow dyeing the meat.) The most noticeable feature of the chicken was the enormous amount of breading, that had very little staying power. When you take one bite, all of the breading falls off the entire piece into a giant pile on your plate. Indeed three out of four of us left a giant pile of breading on our plates when we left (one of my friends demolished his, so there you go). With regard to the chicken meat, meagre though it be, it had a number of virtues. Young chickens are tender, and this chicken was tender, and reasonably juicy as well. I did think, however, that it was overly herb-y. There was a ton of pretty powerful herbs, and unless that's what you're looking for in your fried chicken experience (and I am not), that's not exactly ideal.
One final complaint one of my companions voiced went as follows: The best fried chicken is fried in a way that the skin melts, leaving you with no soggy skin to deal with afterward. Here, that had not happened.
So it was not the best fried chicken. At the end of the meal, we were given a ballot. Apparently Moonshine Etc. is on some competition for best fried chicken with some other places like Lily & Bloom, Boomshack, Okra, and Butcher's Club. (I definitely hope Butcher's Club loses, they don't even make chicken, the lying jerks.) Anyway, here was how I filled it out:
1-10 scale, 10 being the best
Tenderness: 8
Moisture: 8
Crispiness: 7
Flavour: 7
Overall Impression: 6
Total Score: 6
It was tender and juicy, as I've said. I didn't quite know what to put for "crispiness". It had no lack of crisp, but there were yet other problems with the breading. Same with "flavour"-- it had lots of it, but maybe too much. Thus the last two categories show that the initial categories don't quite identify all that makes fried chicken good.
So what's my Overall Impression? It's OK. I'd rather have Roundhouse chicken and Jollibee, in that order. I don't know about the other competitors in the fried chicken contest, I may have to try them in the future. But I won't be having the chicken here again.
張貼
