i just had an early dinner at HB. there is much to praise here: totally compostable dish/glassware; simple syrup for us sweet tea drinkers (and real, brewed iced tea to squirt it into); mellow vibe, even with a long line at 5:10; friendly, helpful staff. and on a warm day the patio will be a huge plus. but, unfortunately, i wasn't crazy about the chicken. the bird itself wasn't anything special (nothing great about amish birds, IMO). and much as i love spanish paprika, sprinkling it on at the last minute is just lame. i politely told one of the owners (who i do not know), that i didn't think it was a great idea, and he said to ask for it to be left off next time i order. can do, but i still don't think it works. paprika benefits from either being cooked, or at the very least allowed to meld/mellow into something like aoili, not dusted on top of chicken.
i did like the limey-sweet potato salad and the spicy chinese broccoli, even with it's strange topping of goat cheese. one point worth mentioning; and i 'm surprised that no one has mentioned it (i don't think), is that the chicken thighs and breasts are boneless. very nice, if you appreciate the convenience factor, but i suspect the flavor suffers because of it. it wasn't noticeably dry, just 'meh'.
and i much prefer the more minimal, yet crisper coating of Small's chicken. gotta add how disappointing the corn muffin was. tiny, and almost white from flour; very little cornmeal. this is not a small thing, when what you're selling basically is fried chicken and a corn muffin. frankly, i'd be embarrassed to open a new restaurant with these lackluster muffins on the menu. it's so easy to do so much better.

Not a single picture of the newest best fried chicken in Chicago. C'mon folks i want to see it.

Team AS went on Saturday. Chicken was fab, of course. The sides were up and down. I could eat a quart of the creamed corn with thai curry. Corn bread small but very good. Mac n cheese was alright, if a bit dry - better the next day. Pickled purple carrot and something else was a dud. We went early and the line was manageable. I overheard the couple next to us ordering something like $250 worth of chicken. Yikes. Our tab was $56 with 4 pieces of chicken, 2 kids meals, cocktail (superb) and a beer.

Anyway, this place is a winner. Bring your friends.

(I don't know the owners)

Went on Friday around 5:30, and there was barely a line. The restaurant is very nice looking on the inside, and the bar/patio area out back looks like a winner. I was quite excited to try the food, and it was fine. But that's all- fine.
The chicken itself- not the batter or spices- is very good. It's moist and served in a wide variety. I was able to try a leg, thigh, and breast, and enjoyed all three. The batter it was fried in, however, is just not my taste. Way too much paprika, not enough black pepper. It seems many enjoy this flavor profile, but it was too bold, too strong for my liking. The honey butter topping, however, is quite addictive and delicious.
The sides didn't wow me either. The daily pickles- carrots and beets- were decent, but there was not anything exciting or interesting about the pickling spices used. The corn muffins were tiny- not much larger than a sliver dollar. And the mac and cheese was unremarkable as well- not very creamy, and again a very small portion. Iced tea was good, and the employees and vibe make this place welcoming for kids, a big plus in my book. I may even be back. But this is not a groundbreaking place that will be bringing in the crowds months from now (as opposed to it's neighbors Hot Doug's and Kuma's), or a place I'm already scheming to return to.

jimswside wrote:Not a single picture of the newest best fried chicken in Chicago. C'mon folks i want to see it.

No, it was posted here.

Sweet merciful crap that's some damned fine chicken. Beautiful, perfectly seasoned crust, moist, juicy, and tasty interior... that might just be my platonic ideal for a proper fried chicken.

If I have one piddling complaint, it's that the honey butter is completely superfluous; the chicken is so good that anything more actually detracts from the perfection of it.

Sula's somewhat negative review has been getting some buzz on Twitter

http://www.chicagoreader.com/chicago/mi ... d=11255311

It's boneless. Or rather the thighs and breasts, the most and least desirable parts of the chicken, respectively, are surgically altered to remove the bird's structural support. It's an unorthodox and disturbing presentation which was only recently explored with any depth. The logic is admirable. The cooks bone out the thighs and breasts to save on waste, to repurpose them for things like stock, and to streamline the frying process. All reasonable goals that result in an otherwise quality bird that feels—at least texturally—overprocessed, like something selected from freezer cases across the land by a demographic that would rather avoid the truth that its food wasn't once alive. That is to say nothing of the fact that bones impart flavor to any piece of meat when cooked­—just as they do to water when making stock.

mgmcewen wrote:Sula's somewhat negative review has been getting some buzz on Twitter

http://www.chicagoreader.com/chicago/mi ... d=11255311

That is to say nothing of the fact that bones impart flavor to any piece of meat when cooked­—just as they do to water when making stock.

Or not

http://www.seriouseats.com/2013/03/ask- ... -beef.html

That's some pretty unscientific science right there. But fun, and mostly right in its narrow context. I would agree based on my own observations that the bone=flavor postulate is oversold. On the other hand, I don't think one can extrapolate from the results of a 3 beefsteak test some global conclusion that bones impart no flavor to meats when cooked. For example, the flavorful and moist marrow that the SeriousEats article describes as hopelessly sealed in bone might still be pretty locked up after grilling a steak, but the seepage of reddish-purple chicken marrow out of soft poultry bones into adjacent flesh when frying yardbird, objectively speaking, happens in real life whether you intend it or not. And obviously bones and connective tissue have flavor (particularly after roasting) and collagen, both of which release when meats are long-cooked whether it be a braise or a BBQ. It's fair to question whether leaving a bone attached to a fillet for the "Chicago cut" at a steakhouse adds anything but weight to justify a bigger price. But the conclusion probably shouldn't be applied to a fried chicken or a pot of neckbones in red sauce or oxtails stewed in the Cuban or Jamaican style, of which it would be absurd to suggest that the bones and cartilage are superfluous.

Sula's "problem" about the bone-removal strikes me as purely theoretical. That is, whether or not in theory it's a bad thing to remove the bone from the breast, the fact that empirically whatever it is that Honey Butter does resulted in--by leaps and bounds--the best chicken breast I've ever had in my life is reason enough for them to do whatever it is they do.

I was just commenting on the article, not the chicken. If HB is that much better than Parson's, I might stand in line too.

riddlemay wrote:Sula's "problem" about the bone-removal strikes me as purely theoretical. That is, whether or not in theory it's a bad thing to remove the bone from the breast, the fact that empirically whatever it is that Honey Butter does resulted in--by leaps and bounds--the best chicken breast I've ever had in my life is reason enough for them to do whatever it is they do.

i'm glad you loved the chicken breast- i didn't. i found the chicken itself moist, but quite lacking in flavor. i also wasn't happy with the way the breaded skin slipped completely off the chicken leaving it quite naked. to eat 'fried chicken' i alternated bites of skin with bites of chicken. i'm glad to learn from mike gebert's article that the chickens are humanely raised (this is important to me as an eater), but i can't help wondering if removing the bones hurt the flavor. the article quoted above, which is strictly about beef simply is not relevant to a discussion about chickens (IMO) . i wish honey butter chicken a long and busy life. and i'd have been willing to try the chicken again, except the terrible corn muffin just sealed the deal- i'd rather go elsewhere.

i'm glad to learn from mike gebert's article that the chickens are humanely raised (this is important to me as an eater)

The problem is what standard of humane? There are a couple of widely-used standards out there, such as the one used by Whole Foods. I wonder if Whole Foods sells Miller's. I'll check next time I'm there. I suspect based on my experience with Amish poultry that they are on Step 2 of that system, which is "Animals are provided with enrichments that encourage behavior that's natural to them — like a bale of straw for chickens to peck at, a bowling ball for pigs to shove around, or a sturdy object for cattle to rub against." at most. They are not free range. Free range is highly contentious in the poultry world. Anti-free range people contend it's better not to have them free-range because of risk of predation. Pro-free range people believe those risks are worth it because the chickens get to have ample exercise and get to exhibit natural behaviors like foraging.

I am firmly in the free-range camp, but it's a tough camp to be in. You get hardly much of a breast and yields are pretty low in general. It's a seasonal product too. No truly free-range farmer could supply a restaurant like HBFC. As someone who has been involved in helping small-scale livestock farmers, it's a little disheartening to time and time again see people who profess a farm to table ethos design food businesses that cannot be supplied by these farmers.

But what you view as humane is highly subjective. My own view is that factory farmed beef is more humane than Miller's chicken, but Miller's chicken is better than anything you find at a chain restaurant.

However, my ethics only go so far, and I do plan on at least trying HBFC. I've had their original chicken at the Sunday Dinner Club and it was good, though honestly I preferred a lot of their other dishes like the cassoulet, which BTW is a dish that could actually be sourced from local small-scale farmers.

mgmcewen wrote: I am firmly in the free-range camp, but it's a tough camp to be in. You get hardly much of a breast and yields are pretty low in general.

I don't know if Camp Maccabee was "free-range" or not, but I also got pretty much no breast and I'm not sure what you mean by "yields", but I'm guessing mine were pretty low too.

I haven't tried Honey Butter's fried chicken yet, though I plan to. But at least part of this latest pr problem they might be experiencing has got to be due to the perceptions created by the crap we too often are served elsewhere and that is available from the largest factory farms - i.e., tenders and the like. In reality, Mike Sula didn't spend a ton of time in his review on disappointment with the boneless chicken. For me, no doubt I will need to get over the fact that I enjoy gnawing on the bone when I eat fried chicken . . . much like I prefer to cut the steak by myself and to eat the fish whole with the head on. In a way, they're changing the way I personally enjoy eating this particular food.

Now does removing the bone before cooking affect the flavor or moisture? I have not conducted any experiments comparing the frying of chicken on the bone versus first removing the bone and then frying, but I have some doubts that 20 minutes (if that) of bone-in frying time will produce a significantly improved chicken flavor. I've never prepared a chicken stock in less than 3 hours. And some of the best fried chicken I've ever tasted is the Japanese karaage chicken (particularly the one served at Raku in Las Vegas) and this is typically served without the bone.

mgmcewen wrote:The problem is what standard of humane?

Good point. One could argue that raising a happy chicken, just in order to murder it and eat it, is not "humane." Mind you, I would not argue that, because I am a carnivore. But I do question how much it matters how happy our animals are before we slaughter them.

riddlemay wrote:

mgmcewen wrote:The problem is what standard of humane?

Good point. One could argue that raising a happy chicken, just in order to murder it and eat it, is not "humane." Mind you, I would not argue that, because I am a carnivore. But I do question how much it matters how happy our animals are before we slaughter them.

I suppose this is more in line with a KFC type of thread, but with all the crazy accusations that somehow they are creating chickens with no beaks or whatever Frankenchickens are being created then why stop at no beak? Just create a chicken with no brain, it wouldn't know if it was being treated poorly right?

Ram4 wrote:

riddlemay wrote:

mgmcewen wrote:The problem is what standard of humane?

Good point. One could argue that raising a happy chicken, just in order to murder it and eat it, is not "humane." Mind you, I would not argue that, because I am a carnivore. But I do question how much it matters how happy our animals are before we slaughter them.

I suppose this is more in line with a KFC type of thread, but with all the crazy accusations that somehow they are creating chickens with no beaks or whatever Frankenchickens are being created then why stop at no beak? Just create a chicken with no brain, it wouldn't know if it was being treated poorly right?

I'm not saying it's not better to be happy than unhappy, even for a chicken. And I'd like all animals to be happy. I'm just suggesting there's something "inconsistent" (to choose the most neutral word) in wishing happiness for an animal we plan to murder.

I don't use the word "murder" in order to condemn the practice of animal slaughter, because I am a carnivore. I use it in order to call a spade a spade.

PETA = People Eating Tasty Animals!

Humane usually doesn't have much to do with "happiness." Humane typically means minimization of pain or the OED says "characterized by sympathy with and consideration for others". The idea that this doesn't matter because we are killing them anyway seems strange to me. It's like saying why bother eating nice food if you are going to die anyway. But either way, I can see the argument that the Miller system is more humane in some ways. I don't wish happiness on any animals. It's difficult to apply the concept to chickens.

mgmcewen wrote:Humane typically means minimization of pain or the OED says "characterized by sympathy with and consideration for others". The idea that this doesn't matter because we are killing them anyway seems strange to me. It's like saying why bother eating nice food if you are going to die anyway.

I do see the logic in that analogy.

mgmcewen wrote:

i'm glad to learn from mike gebert's article that the chickens are humanely raised (this is important to me as an eater)

I am firmly in the free-range camp, but it's a tough camp to be in. You get hardly much of a breast and yields are pretty low in general.

It could also be that mass market chicken producers have bred a breed of chicken with monster breasts and tiny legs in order to cater to market demands. Typically these are a Cornish cross chicken due to their massive breast size.

mgmcewen wrote:Sula's somewhat negative review has been getting some buzz on Twitter

http://www.chicagoreader.com/chicago/mi ... d=11255311

It's boneless. Or rather the thighs and breasts, the most and least desirable parts of the chicken, respectively, are surgically altered to remove the bird's structural support. It's an unorthodox and disturbing presentation which was only recently explored with any depth. The logic is admirable. The cooks bone out the thighs and breasts to save on waste, to repurpose them for things like stock, and to streamline the frying process. All reasonable goals that result in an otherwise quality bird that feels—at least texturally—overprocessed, like something selected from freezer cases across the land by a demographic that would rather avoid the truth that its food wasn't once alive. That is to say nothing of the fact that bones impart flavor to any piece of meat when cooked­—just as they do to water when making stock.

I can't help but notice that he doesn't actually say that the chicken he tasted has less flavor as a result of deboning. In fact, there's no indication in the article at all that he even tasted the chicken. He just makes a blanket statement on his platonic ideal for fried chicken, that deboning will makes it taste worse, without ever saying that the actual chicken actually does taste worse.

Independent George wrote:

mgmcewen wrote:Sula's somewhat negative review has been getting some buzz on Twitter

http://www.chicagoreader.com/chicago/mi ... d=11255311

It's boneless. Or rather the thighs and breasts, the most and least desirable parts of the chicken, respectively, are surgically altered to remove the bird's structural support. It's an unorthodox and disturbing presentation which was only recently explored with any depth. The logic is admirable. The cooks bone out the thighs and breasts to save on waste, to repurpose them for things like stock, and to streamline the frying process. All reasonable goals that result in an otherwise quality bird that feels—at least texturally—overprocessed, like something selected from freezer cases across the land by a demographic that would rather avoid the truth that its food wasn't once alive. That is to say nothing of the fact that bones impart flavor to any piece of meat when cooked­—just as they do to water when making stock.

I can't help but notice that he doesn't actually say that the chicken he tasted has less flavor as a result of deboning. In fact, there's no indication in the article at all that he even tasted the chicken. He just makes a blanket statement on his platonic ideal for fried chicken, that deboning will makes it taste worse, without ever saying that the actual chicken actually does taste worse.

He describes flavors throughout the piece. It's pretty clear that he actually tasted the chicken . . . and several other items.

=R=

ronnie_suburban wrote:He describes flavors throughout the piece. It's pretty clear that he actually tasted the chicken . . . and several other items.
=R=

Look again - when it comes to the chicken, everything is described obliquely and indirectly. There is very little about the chicken itself.

In some ways this mildly spicy seasoning, which seems to intensify in leftovers, approximates a lighter version of Prince's Hot Chicken—Nashville's famous (or infamous) cayenne-powered yardbird. At Honey Butter, it's spiced for folks who may not like to climb the Scoville scale too high. It would be great if they could season to order, but instead the rest of us will have to make do with the Co-Op Hot Sauce on the table. This chicken has a thick, bready, enjoyably crunchy crust that occasionally fails to adhere to its base, but that's hardly its most controversial quality.

Then comes the previously quoted passage.

Finally this:

The legs are unmolested, but on each of my visits I was dealt an unbalanced proportion: six breasts, a single thigh, and a single leg in each eight-piece order. Luck of the draw, I suppose—or do those Amish farmers have a sinister breeding program we don't know about?

Honey Butter's more conspicuous signature is the sweet compound butter you're meant to slather on the hot chicken, which should make sense to fans of syrup-drizzled chicken and waffles, but it is much more enjoyable on the bite-size, honeycomb-and-honeybee-embossed corn muffins that come with each order.

In short, he says:

1. It's lightly seasoned, and wishes they could season to order.
2. The breading is good, but occasionally falls off the chicken too easily.
3. The contents of each order is inconsistent.
4. The honey butter doesn't work for him; it's much better on the corn muffins.

I actually agree with all four sentences, and much of what he goes on to say about the sides. It's just... well, that's the entire extent of his description of the chicken. He spends an entire paragraph saying they should cook the chicken with the bones in to improve the flavor... but he never actually describes the flavor. He never says if it's moist or dry, tough or tender, bland or flavorful. He just says the four things I enumerated, and that they should leave the bones in.

I've no doubt he's eaten it - but it seems to me that the article is less a review than a chance to show off his writing skills. It's the kind of thing I see in sports journalism all the time, and find equally irritating - he's made himself the story instead of the nominal subject he was reporting on.

Independent George wrote:I've no doubt he's eaten it . . .

Exactly.

=R=

There's no question he ate it. He states what he ordered, and what he received. Is someone trying to suggest a reviewer ordered a lot of food and then just sat there and looked at it, only to throw it away? Come on....he doesn't mention mastication but it seems to me he discusses everything else.

I think you guys are slightly missing George's point and I would make the same point (I thought I did to some extent above). It's one thing to taste the chicken and determine that the meat has less flavor because the bones have been removed, it's another matter to assume that to be the case. Although Mike seems to suggest that removing bones will cause the chicken to have less flavor, he doesn't come out and make that exact assertion about this chicken. Personally, I question whether 15-20 minutes of cooking time with bone-in chicken would have a significant effect in terms of flavor, but I'm merely guessing based upon how long it takes me to create a very flavorful chicken stock. I hope to test this to some degree at home (and at Honey Butter, where I have not yet been). But again, I think the biggest negative for Honey Butter Fried Chicken in terms of serving de-boned chicken is perception, and that is based upon the crappy boneless chicken sold at grocery stores.

DutchMuse wrote:There's no question he ate it. He states what he ordered, and what he received. Is someone trying to suggest a reviewer ordered a lot of food and then just sat there and looked at it, only to throw it away? Come on....he doesn't mention mastication but it seems to me he discusses everything else.

No. Did someone read Ronnie's post, but not my own?

I'm saying he asserted it was worse because the bones were removed, but without ever getting around to actually saying how it tasted. I am not saying he didn't eat the chicken - I'm saying he managed to write a review about how he feels about chicken without ever actually describing the chicken.

He wrote exactly one sentence on the seasoning (needs more!), one sentence on the breading (falls off too easily), and one sentence on the contents of the bucket (it's random!). He wrote zero sentences on how the chicken actually tasted. I'll be happy to eat crow (and chicken!) if someone can demonstrate I am wrong on this. It shouldn't be hard - a single quote will do it.

Hell, if you go back to my original post, I explicitly say that I believe he tasted it:

Independent George wrote:I can't help but notice that he doesn't actually say that the chicken he tasted has less flavor as a result of deboning.

When Webster's publishes a definition for "Beanplating," I hope they link to this thread.