Chi-Chicken’s nuggets-&-fries combo doesn’t just gwan … it over-gwans
Chi-Chicken’s nuggets-&-fries combo, for a very decent K32, is the call of greatness.
In late December, shortly before the world began to eat all its own feelings, a couple colleagues and I were wondering what to order for lunch. I live right behind a KFC, pretty much, and as much as I adore the Colonel’s time-trusted recipe the magic wears a little thin when it’s right there. (It’s like being - beg your pardon - happily married.) Nando’s seems to cost an arm or a leg, or at least an additional finger. An art director no less wandered in with a mysterious package, the sort of styrofoam packaging you might normally associate with a small but potent business in town centre. Remember Mr. B’s? Like that.
My guy acted like it was nothing, then he opened the pack to reveal a nice handful of chicken nuggets. He offered far too many of us a bite, as our meals were still an Afri-Delivery away. I asked from whence this crunchy goodness came, and my good man replied simply, “Chi-Chicken.”
“Chi-what?”
The gentleman was forced to repeat the name several times, like he’d sighted something extraterrestrial just outside of Roswell. New-ish place, he said, at Foxdale Court. He said he’d found it one evening after living it up with the socialites at Sky Bar, as one does, and having long tired of only ever sponging beverages at the shawarma joint downstairs. He acted like it was whatever, perhaps because he’d sampled it several times. He lives in Roma, which is so very far away from even a whiff of a KFC. I stared at him like he was David Livingstone’s great-grandson: like he’d discovered a mythical city at the floor of the Zambezi.
“Would you like to try a chip?” he said. With a nugget, please, I replied, almost curtsying.
That chip … was the sort of chip a stylish aunt or uncle taught you to make when there wasn’t any money for fast food, but there were potatoes in the pantry. (This aunt or uncle might also have introduced you to eye-liner, or heavy metal.) They might have over-grilled the drumsticks or not sprinkled nearly enough breadcrumbs over everything. They certainly poured too much oil in the pan, and produced a slinky chip that you grew to adore. A greasy fry that absorbed all the ketchup, and forevermore re-enforced the superiority of home-made cooking over eating out - even if it was home-made fast food.
That is the Chi-Chicken chip: slinky, slippery, not too bothered with crispiness, so that the nuggets can bear the burden of crunch. And then there’s Chi-Chicken’s ‘trademark’ sauce. The lads and I speculated, several orders, several days later, as to what it contained. Tomato sauce? Mayo? Mustard? All of the above? Quite possibly.
I personally have to go an awfully long way for Chi-Chicken’s nuggets and fries but it’s always worth it. Sometimes I can’t even pause a tasting long enough to apply a smidge of salt. The meal is best dealt with while it’s hot, in the passenger’s seat, as some grown-up navigates traffic.
