Archive for July, 2009

Honduras

Friday, July 24th, 2009

honduras-trailer

3.5 out of 5

3.5 out of 5

Address:
2538 Elmont | Large map
Austin, TX 78741

Phone: 512- 740-5580

Hours:
Thursday, 11am-10pm
Friday, 11am-11pm
Saturday, 9am-11pm
Sunday, 9am-9pm

Price range: $8.50 - $12.50
(the fried chicken is the most expensive item on the menu)

Location: Riverside
Type of restaurant: Trailer
Payment accepted: Cash
Good for: Real Central American food, hipsters, late-night bites
Meals served: Breakfast, lunch and dinner

honduras-drumstick“1000% Honduras” reads the bold, blue text on this little mid-Riverside trailer. Honduras offers a uniquely Central American version of fried chicken: covered in a creamy sauce of mustard, mayonnaise, vinegar and various other condiments, the two-piece chicken dish comes with green bananas and a heaping salad of cilantro, onion and other vibrant vegetables that we had a hard time identifying. After the first bite, our taste buds were jumping with surprise and delight.

The trailer’s parked at Food Stop, a rundown gas station and convenience store. Located at the heart of the (arguably) most Mexican part of Austin, Honduras faces Mexican shopping center El Gran Mercado, a Mexican flea market and student apartments. Honduras offers a fresh break from all of the Mexican food in Austin.jessica

Some tips for maximizing your Honduras visit:

  1. Everything is cooked to order (nice!) and takes 15-20 minutes (boo). Don’t wait in the heat; go in the evening or at night.
  2. Actually, call and preorder.
  3. The creamy sauce gets too rich after the first piece of fried chicken. Ask for sauce on only one piece of chicken.
  4. Bring cash. The fried chicken is $8.50.
  5. Unless you already know you love green bananas, don’t order extra. They taste like bitter, unripe bananas.
  6. Order the Tamarind drink. Honduras extracts the sweet-and-sour pulp from this Mexican seed and turns it into an addictive beverage. At whole foods, this would be 6 bucks. At Honduras, it’s $2.

Co-founded and owned by sisters (and Honduras natives) Jessica and Mimi, this little joint not only serves up authentic Honduras grub, but also boasts stellar customer service. Jessica entertained us the whole time, letting us snack on her bag of Tamarind seeds, showing us how they purplefy the onions (by soaking them in juices from other strong-hued veggies), and talking to us about her 2nd job as a nanny.

Overall, Honduras’ fried chicken is well worth a trip to Riverside. Just don’t go when it’s 105 degrees.

honduras-chicken

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Posted in Restaurants | 2 Comments »

Kentucky Fried Chicken recipe cracked?

Wednesday, July 22nd, 2009

Kentucky Fried Chicken recipe cracked?

The Colonel and his empire might be cooked.

At least that’s the rumor, and it’s all due to finance manager Ron Douglas. The Long Island, New York man claims he’s almost figured out Kentucky Fried Chicken’s secret recipe of 11 herbs and spices the restaurant uses to season its chicken.

According to MSNC, Douglas, 34, has spent years attempting to reproduce KFC’s Original Recipe. He started by gathering clues on the Internet, experimenting in his kitchen and at one point even attempted to bribe workers at KFC for the recipe.

“They don’t know the recipe. The seasoning comes all prepackaged,” Douglas said.

But after years of trial and error, Douglas claims to have the secret to KFC’s successful fried chicken: The secret recipe that keeps millions coming back.

“We’ve done taste tests, and a lot of people can’t tell the difference,” Douglas said. “It’s very close.”

Of course, KFC has dismissed Douglas’ replication recipe.

“Plenty of people have tried to duplicate the recipe over the years, but there is still only one place to get authentic Original Recipe Chicken - at a KFC restaurant,” spokesman Rick Maynard said.

The KFC Web site says Sanders told no one the recipe until right before he died in 1980. Currently, the original recipe is kept in a safe in the company’s Louisville headquarters.

Douglas said he hasn’t got in any trouble with the chicken chain, and he doesn’t expect that he will.

“The recipes are my own — I use the names as a reference point so people know what they’re eating,” he said. “I’m pretty sure I’m not taking away business from these big chains.”

Besides, Douglas says, people need chicken, even during a recession.

“I think the recession has really been good for me,” he said. “People want to eat these delicious meals without spending all the money. The demand is huge, and maybe this will lead to a cooking show. Now the sky’s the limit.”

That doesn’t deter Douglas, though. To display his efforts, Douglas created RecipeSecrets.net, which has recipes from many famous fast food chains, including Cracker Barrel’s sweet potato casserole, Outback Steakhouse’s coconut shrimp and Macaroni Grill’s chicken cannelloni.

He also has a new book, “America’s Most Wanted Recipes,” which was published recently by Simon and Schuster.

The book includes more than 200 recipes that copy the specialties of large restaurant chains including Olive Garden, the Cheesecake Factory and Red Lobster.

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Posted in Miscellaneous | 2 Comments »

The “Black Olympics”

Thursday, July 16th, 2009

Dallas Cowboys’ Martellus Bennett recently posted a YouTube video depicting an eating contest between him and his brother Michael, in which the siblings race to see who can consume fried chicken, Kool-Aid and watermelon the fastest. In the video, Bennett refers to the contests as the “Black Olympics.”

Due to its exaggerated, stereotypical nature, the video has accumulated pages of argumentative YouTube comments and threads of both backlash and props.

According to CBS, Bennett said that he filmed the eating contests because he and his brother “were like, ‘Man, we eating every stereotype so let’s race and see who can eat the chicken the fastest, drink the Kool-Aid the fastest and the watermelon competition.’ It was all fun and games.”

When asked about racial stereotypes, he said that “That’s something we deal with every day. If we’re able to make a joke about it, it makes it even funnier to me.”

The video has a 4/5 rating on YouTube, and some of the comments include:

  • “Love this! Tired of a few uptight people making a big deal about everyone being PC these days.. There’s a reason there’s so many hits on here.. its funny!”
  • “These ignorant fools don’t have any sense of self, their culture, or their people, and, just because they can run up and down a ball field, they get to make fun in this despicable manner.”
  • “lmao damm yall had me rollin u crazy an that shit madddddd funny”

What do you think?

On an unrelated note, I personally think I could eat fried chicken twice as fast.

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Republican Fried Chicken

Tuesday, July 14th, 2009

The Young Republicans convention was held in Indianapolis last weekend, and the local Republican blog Hoosier Access sat down with RNC Chairman Michael Steele for a good talk.

During the question and answer session, an audience member asked, “Regarding your inclusion of the diverse populations of the Republican party, what is your plan moving forward?”

Yes, it wasn’t the most articulate way to ask the question — how about how is the party going to lure new members? — but Steele’s answer wasn’t much better.

“My plan is to say “Ya’ll come,” Steele said with a Southern accent. He then added “I got the fried chicken and potato salad,” after hearing someone say “I’ll bring the collard greens.”

From from the Huffington Post:
Yes, that’s right. To lure African-Americans into the GOP, Steele is offering “fried chicken and potato salad.” Since he mentions Republicans should also be reaching out to the LGBT community, I wonder what stereotype he’s going to offer us? Buttplugs and Birkenstocks?

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Our attempt at fried chicken

Sunday, July 12th, 2009

We decided to fry our own chicken. We’ve tried before: It was a disaster. The batter wouldn’t stick, we used crappy boneless, skinless frozen chicken breasts and the oil burnt our chicken. cooking-whole-plate

So we went all out this time and got mega-prepared. We went to Walmart and got all of the ingredients of Food Network whore Alton Brown’s fried chicken.

After coming home, we decided that his recipe was kind of freaky and West coast because you have to use Hungarian paprika and marinade your chicken in buttermilk the night before and pan-fry the chicken. So we went a little more southern and combined Paula Dean’s fried chicken recipe (excerpt: “Add enough hot sauce so the egg mixture is bright orange”) and another generic, Googled fried chicken recipe.

We got home all pumped and shortly after realized that our whole, cut-up Wal-mart chicken was green-splotched and smelled like a dead person. Oh, and it expired three weeks ago. MAKE SURE YOUR WALMART-BOUGHT CHICKEN IS NOT EXPIRED. So, after thorough hand-washes, Tyler sped to Fiesta mart and bought a spotless, fresh Tyson whole chicken.cooking-wet-hands

We set a small bucket of vegetable shortening to medium heat, then assembled our dry mixture in a pan. It was:

  1. 1 cup of flour
  2. A shit ton of cayenne pepper
  3. Little shit ton of salt, pepper and paprika.

In a separate bowl, we poured and stirred the wet mix:

  1. 3 eggs
  2. 1/3 cup buttermilk
  3. Enough Tabasco to turn the mixture orange. We like spicy.

Vegetable shortening melted and slightly boiling, we took a drumstick, drenched it in the wet mix and patted it around in the flour. Then, we plopped it into the frying oil.

We noticed the batter wasn’t very thick, and we adore Willie Mae’s in New Orleans. The restaurant makes a wet-batter fried chicken, so we decided to combine the wet and dry mixes together.

Our sticky, wet batter conglomeration required countless additions of a “little more flour” and a “splash of water” and blah blah blah to make it actually stick to the chicken and not runnily glop all over fingers and the counter.

We kept the dark meat pieces in for about 14 minutes (they take longer to cook) and the white pieces in for about 11 minutes. We cut open each piece to make sure the meat wasn’t pink.cooking-pulling-chicken

End the end, the dry-batter drumstick looked the most normal—Church’s-style, crispy and thin batter—while the wet-batter pieces ended up looking like Asian-fried chicken—thick, smooth and abundant batter. Both were good for different reasons.

For our last piece, we decided to drench the batter in Tabasco and cayenne pepper, and hat piece ended up tasting like a hot wing. Except more badass.

We feasted out that night and went into a fat coma.

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Posted in Miscellaneous | 4 Comments »

Hyde Park Bar and Grill

Thursday, July 9th, 2009

Note: They only sell Tony’s Southern Comfort Fried Chicken on
Monday-Tuesday, 5:00 - 10:30hyde-park-bar-and-grill-1

Rating:

3 out of 5

3 out of 5

Address:
4521 West Gate Blvd. | Large map
Austin, TX 78745

Phone: 512- 899-2700

Hours:
Sunday-Thursday, 11:00am-10:30pm
Friday-Saturday, 11:00am-Midnight

Price range: $10 - $20
Location: South Austin, Ben White and 360
Type of restaurant: Casual dining
Payment accepted: Cash, credit cards
Good for: Dates, late-night dinners
Meals served: Lunch and dinner

Sans the bland strip-shopping center location in the middle of Ben White/ 360/ Lamar/ Mopac hell, Hyde Park Bar and Grill’s south location does everything–well, almost everything–right. hyde-park-bar-and-grill-2

The service was good; our waiter even engaged in mine and Tyler’s squabble over the proper way to devour fried chicken. When I asked for gravy, he promptly brought a fat 3-oz container of it.

The atmosphere was appealing and clean: Paintings hung all around, and they actually weren’t shitty. They were good. How often are restaurant art exhibitions actually good?

And, most importantly, the chicken was steaming hot and clearly cooked to order. The batter was thick and salty. The meat was plentiful and bulky. The recipe is Tony Herring’s of the late Tony’s Southern Comfort Restaurant–the former go-to fried chicken joint in Austin. I got a breast and a wing, and Tyler got a breast and a leg. We gorged. It was scrumptious.

The downside: The fried chicken is $9.99.

You have to order it as an entrée with two sides, too; we both went with green chile cheese mashed potatoes and Hyde Park fries (voted best fries in Austin by the Chronicle). All too much? Yes. Still worth it, especially after a margarita or two? Yes. But only as a one-time or occasional outing. $9.99 and 4,000 calories a day isn’t compatible with surviving.

Hyde Park Bar and Grill is good for dates or birthdays, but I wouldn’t go there for a quick fix: For a couple pieces of steamy, cooked-to-order chicken for a few bucks, go to Bill Miller’s instead.

hyde-park-bar-and-grill-31

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Posted in Restaurants | 1 Comment »

Austin Fried Chicken, Reddit

Wednesday, July 1st, 2009

A good friend of mine posted this site on Reddit, the social news Web site. In the interest of chicken transparency, and because the comments weren’t spam, which we get about five a day, here are the two comments the link got:

1. From Paulaner:
Terrys Soul Food on E 6th is really good for fried chicken. Also this chicken and waffles sounds amazing.

2. From adrianmonk:
Once upon a time, I heard that the fried chicken at the convenience store at Lamar Place and Lamar (which is near Threadgill’s, just north of Denson) was really good. But that was years ago.

EDIT: The one on the north side of Lamar Place, not the gas station on the south side. Also, I think I am idly rambling. I have no idea if the chicken there is actually any good or not, or even whether the place still exists.

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Posted in Miscellaneous | 1 Comment »

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