When I was a kid to me KFC was about the most delicious food on Earth (and a pretty rare treat. Now I find it so bland that I rarely bother with it. I’m never sure how much of it is the chicken getting blander and how much is my sense of taste getting much weaker with time (which is definitely happening).
Never heard of Slim Chickens, but I approve of the name.
I must have missed that. I went to the first one on Pushkin Square the week it opened, and ate there at least once a week until I had to go back to Vermont to finish my MA. I moved to Moscow in 1992, and the only thing that had changed in the interim was that they’d put coffee on the menu.
I covered the opening of the second one, on the Arbat, when I was working on the radio in 1994. The big thing then was that they’d started offering the Filet-O-Fish.
One thing they tried that didn’t work too well was a deep-fried potato pie like their hot apple and cherry pies. It didn’t taste bad, but it sat in your stomach like a ball of lead.
The last time I was in Moscow was December 2021. From what I’ve heard, the McDonald’s they’ve taken over are now selling crap.
I should mention that when McDonald’s decided to open in Russia, everything was done locally. They had their own beef and vegetable farms, bakeries, dairies, processing plants, the works.
The only thing they had to import was the cheese for the burgers, and it was trucked in from Germany. You could tell immediately it was not the same cheese they use at McD’s in the US. Which is funny because it tasted just like the surplus cheese the American government was handing out in the '80s.
(I got a lot of that for free because I volunteered to work at a local food bank back in St Paul.)
We got our first Caine’s just a few years ago. I still haven’t been there, but I did say, “Sounds like Slim Chicken’s.” We just recently had another chicken finger place open, Layne’s I think, so this seems like a trending restaurant type.
I’ve never seen nor heard of a Slim Chickens, but Cane’s is overrated. They’re not bad, as chicken fingers go, but there really isn’t much range in quality when it comes to chicken fingers, and no chicken fingers are worth $10 for three of them and a piece of toast.
For that matter, KFC has really gone up a lot in price lately, too.
Commensurate with the price of eggs, I’d wager.
Yes, there seem to be a lot of chains specializing in chicken, fingers especially; Raising Canes, Dave’s Hot Chicken, Pollo Campero (a Guatemalan chain), Bonchon (Korean chain), etc. And that’s in addition to the usual burger places, many of which also have chicken fingers or tenders.
Interesting, because the Slim Chickens article I quoted from had a photo of a plate of chicken, fries, tubs of dip and… what looked like toast. I just assumed I was somehow mistaken. I’ve never seen fried chicken with toast before - that’s an actual thing, I take it? (I might also add: Why??)
I’ll see if I can find that photo.
j
ETA - don’t know if this will be accessible from non-uk locations
ETA 2 - I’m astonished that the full article says there are already 58 of these places in the UK. Not round my neck of the woods, I assume.
Cane’s is exactly what it says it is. Nothing more. Nothing less. I’ve been there exactly twice. It served me exactly what I expected. The kids seemed to like it lots. I’m very impressed with their business model and that they made it work. I have a special place in my heart for places that only set out to do one or two things and do them well. And I do think Cane’s does it well. Now, if it (or any fast food establishment in America, for Christ’s sake) would serve chicken thighs in their tenders (well, I guess we’d call them something else – planks?) or nuggets, I’d be there much more often. But right now, it’s not something I crave. It’s a solid chicken tender. I just don’t crave chicken tenders often.
I’d like a more widely available chain that serves roast chicken (legs and thighs) rather than battered chicken.
Do have a Mary Brown’s near you? Originally out of Newfoundland, they now have about 300 stores and are expanding internationally. I rarely eat fried chicken anymore, but I prefer it even to Popeyes.
We have a Slim Chickens near my office. I usually go there once a week to get a salad for lunch (trying to eat a little healthier). But they recently started a new policy - not sure if it is corporate-wide or just this store - where orders with grilled chicken are made to order. So if I get a salad with grilled chicken, I have to pull through the drive-thru and wait out front for about 10 minutes while they grill my chicken. You know, it’s a salad - the chicken doesn’t have to be hot and fresh, it could be cold pre-grilled chicken for all I care. But that’s not an option. So if I don’t want to have to wait, I have to order the fried instead of grilled.
The cynical part of me suspects it’s a ploy to get rid of grilled chicken altogether. If people quit ordering grilled because they have to wait, then the bean counters can argue there’s much less demand for grilled chicken, might as well drop it.
Also I’m a little pissed that I haven’t gotten pepperoncinis on my salad for about two years now, even though they still list them as an ingredient on the menu. And I’m also pissed that they dropped cole slaw as an option to fries.
And yet I keep going every week…
Haven’t seen it yet. I’ll have to watch for it.
Why not toast? Some places have biscuits or rolls.
The next step up the ladder from Popeyes or KFC. These places ooomph it up with Texas toast.
Theres a chicken chain called Churchs.
They serve white bread. Not toasted or heated in anyway.
We call that piece of bread a dog treat, after being in the box with greasy fried chicken, that is all it can be. The dogs love it.
I order the Wrap at Slim Chickens.
Chopped tenders, lettuce, cheddar jack cheese and ranch dressing. Rolled in a flat tortilla. They’re very good.
I see a lot of people ordering the chicken wing dinners.
My dad loved sopping up grease with white bread, as do I.
Add me to the list of Americans who have never heard of Slim Chickens. I’m guessing they’re a regional chain that hasn’t made it to my part of the country yet (Checks their website Yep, no locations in California.) Interesting that they’re expanding to the UK before California. Maybe they figure less competition there.
And I suspect that claim that “Americans prefer them to KFC” is pretty much marketing BS from the company. Their marketing department probably commissioned a blind taste test of Slim Chickens vs. KFC or something and Slim Chickens came out on top, but like others have mentioned, “better then KFC” is kind of a low bar.
Is their logo a chicken riding a bomb?
We get Church’s up here in Chicago. A plain ol’ piece of white bread is pretty usual at old school rib shacks and fried chicken joints here, too. As seen here:
There is a Slim Chickens that was on my way home when I commuted. I stopped there once to get supper, and they had gravy! Gravy is one of my weaknesses and rare to see in chains.
I don’t know what was in the gravy, (or maybe it was the chicken) but it had a horrible smell to me. Not a food has gone bad smell, some sort of artificial flavoring maybe. I was nearly sick to my stomach by the time I got home, and couldn’t throw it away fast enough.
BTW, I am Texan, and have been making both fried chicken and chicken fried steak since childhood and have never used sugar. Flour, salt and pepper, plus milk for chicken fried steak.