Fast food chain Americans ‘prefer to KFC’ opening 10 new UK locations
A fast food chain from the US is expanding across the UK, with plans to open 10 more locations in 2025. Slim Chickens, a Southern-inspired chicken chain, will be opening two sites per month for the next five months, with the first two launching in London in February…
Source: Metro newspaper online via MSN feed.
Never heard of them. Mind you, Google tells me that as of last year there were only 204 stores in the whole of the US (compared to 4148 KFC, apparently).
So, a certain amount of puffery in that Metro article, I suspect. But what’s the Straight Dope - ever heard of them? Eaten there? Any good? Anything special about them?
They’re a somewhat new franchise that has been expanding here in the United States. I think we got our first one in Little Rock about a decade ago and they’ve got more locations now. They specialize in fried chicken fingers though the offer wings and chicken sandwiches as well. You can also order an assortment of various sauces to go along with your chicken fingers.
They’re okay. I find their chicken fingers to be a little on the bland side making one of their sauces a necessity if you’re going to eat there. I’ve never tried their sandwich or wings. If you want chicken fingers, I think you’ll probably be happy. Just don’t have unrealistic expectations.
Never heard of them either. Based on the average quality provided by the KFC outlets I’ve sampled over the years there’s plenty of opportunity for them to be rated at least somewhat better than KFC among the hundreds of other fried chicken chains we have.
I had some once in Little Rock…I was in the hospital and my daughter went and got it because I was bitching about the food.
It was like a gourmet meal. At that time and place.
There are a few in my state but none local here yet. From the pix in the menu the stuff looks pretty standard. So about like Cane’s which is really Raising Cane’s.
Which is about the same as
Which all resemble another 40 similar franchises.
They’re all pretty nasty. Cheap chicken leftover snips and tails covered in sugary batter.
Definitely. Even into the 70s they were pretty good at some outlets. Then, like the rest of the fast food business they turned to concentrating more on marketing than quality.
Cain’s uses only chicken tenderloins in their fingers. Good quality but not very flavorful chicken. Tenderloins are little finger sized bits of a chicken breast that almost fall off the rest of the cut so easy to obtain from chicken processors.
You might think KFC is better in North America than elsewhere. It isn’t. The fare I’ve had in Canada is identical to what’s sold on the Arbat in Moscow. 100% corporate standardized.
There’s a KFC, Church’s, and Popeyes within walking distance of my home in Scarborough, ON. I don’t see much difference between them, though I do have a slight preference for Popeyes.
Here’s your primer on cooking anything in US Southern style. Brace yourself
Make up a batter of flour, water, and a bit of oil or egg to give it body. Such as you might use to make a tempura or even pancakes. Now add white sugar to the batter at 10-25% by volume.
Dip [anything remotely edible] in that batter to coat then dump it into a sizzling deep fryer. Ideally one 25-50F cooler than optimal so more of the frying oil absorbs into the batter.
Serve the resulting fine cuisine abomination on a bed of paper towels to absorb some of the grease you don’t eat. Accompanied by a sauce of almost any flavor as long as it’s heavily sweetened.
There. Now you’re cookin’, eatin’, and diabetic-ifiyin’ US Southern style.
Me too. But it’s hit and miss with both of them from store to store. I had Pioneer chicken for a while on the west coast, more consistent but I only went to a couple of the places a few times. The Popeyes closest to me isn’t that good, I think they make a ton of chicken ahead of time so it can be dried out and tough by the time I get it. Also recently got more expensive than KFC. I do like their red beans and rice though. I was recently sentenced to spend a weekend in Ohio and stopped at a Popeyes because it was close to the hotel. Much better than what I get locally and more like the other outlets I’d been to sporadically over the years until they opened a some local places.
I haven’t mixed meat and dairy in about thirty years. So, I haven’t had fast food fried chicken in a long time.
I LOVE Popeye’s biscuits though. I live in Virginia from birth until I was sixteen. I had lots of buttermilk biscuits. None of them were as good as Popeye’s
I’ve had it in Europe, but it’s still the same standardized stuff. I’d like to give it a try in, say, Israel, China, and Australia, just to see if it differs at all, but I doubt it does.
No, I never assumed that it was somehow better because this was the country it started in. As a general rule, any fast food corporation will make all menus as homogenized and standard as possible- across all franchises regardless of country.
McDonald’s in India have menus changed to be without beef or pork products.
I’ve read (sorry no cite) that when McDonalds first opened in Russia, the burgers had spinach on them rather than lettuce.
But if they can reliably provided exactly the same menu items, with exactly the same ingredients at exactly the same quality, then they do.
