Fried Chicken Friday Crisp

Few foods conjure up as much mouthwatering talk as a hot and greasy piece of fried chicken. Everyone has favorites, too, from Harold’s to Table Fifty-Two. But who’s got the very best fried chicken in Chicago, and what makes that chicken great? Every other Friday, all year, we’ll be investigating a different revered fri chi place in the Chicagoland area. Thus, Fried Chicken Friday.

This week, Fri-Chi-Fri heads north to Lakeview’s Crisp, home of one of Travel + Leisure magazine’s best plates of fried chicken in America. Well, we’ll see about that.

On the surface, eating 26 plates of fried chicken in 2011 seems like an easy and delicious task. Fried chicken’s awesome, sides are great, and The Onion’s insurance premium will probably only go up a little bit, presuming our doctors don’t see this.

Actually picking what fried chicken is great, though, is a lot more daunting than that. What makes a drumstick outstanding and not just tastier than most other food? Rules must be applied, and deviations must be minimized, if this study is to be scientific. Thus, these are the preliminary guidelines for Fri-Chi-Fri, as determined by The A.V. Club.

1. We’re only talking about fried chicken. No roast chicken. No wings. No nuggets or tenders.
2. The restaurant/counter/shop can be anywhere in the Chicagoland area, including the suburbs.
3. If a restaurant offers the chicken sauced, it must be ordered plain, sauce on the side. Sauces are extras, and the main dish must be judged purely on its breading, seasoning, and chickenosity.
4. All chicken-serving establishments are up for consideration, from high cuisine to gas station fare. That being said, there are far more than 26 places to get fried chicken in Chicago, the third largest city in the country, so we’ll just have to do our best to get a representative sample.
5. All chicken will be judged on seasoning, crispiness, overall taste, value, and intangibles. Those intangibles come into play with the restaurant in general, as in sides, sauces, Orange Crush availability, bulletproof glass, and so on.

These rules aren’t hard and fast. They’re amendable, and they’re open to reinterpretation farther down the road, though these seem easy enough to follow.

Choosing to kick off Fri-Chi-Fri with Crisp wasn’t an easy decision. It’s not traditional Southern fried chicken, per say. It’s technically Korean fried chicken, though that mainly comes into play in the sauces available for, uh, saucing the chicken. We went to Crisp, though, because it’s just so damn popular. A preliminary Twitter poll (@avclubchicago, people) revealed two overriding poultry heavyweights in the Chi-Fri-Chi scene: Crisp and Harold’s. No shock on the latter (we’ll visit at least one Harold’s outlet later this year for this project), but Crisp was kind of an outlier, so we decided to rock ’n’ roll there first. Onward to judging.

Seasoning: The Crisp fried chicken was quite nicely seasoned in the breading. However, that seasoning didn’t translate down to the chicken, which was moist enough, but kind of bland. The actual chicken was much better with the sauces, but those are intangibles, and not part of the overall chicken goodness, per say.

Crispness: Crisp’s chicken was, in fact, pretty crisp. Some of the pieces in the six piece plate were almost too crisp, though. The drumstick, thigh, and what may have been part of a breast were pretty tasty. The wing didn’t even look that edible. On a positive note, the chicken’s skin didn’t slide right off on the first bite, which is always a plus.

Overall taste: It was just okay. This category’s a toughie because fried chicken is, by virtue of being fried chicken, pretty dang good. So, Crisp wasn’t too bad. Would our dining party come back, though? Nah, not really. As far as Korean fried chicken goes, it was good, not great. There are better places around town. Thus, as far as overall fried chicken goes, same thing.

Value: At $8.95 for the smallest regular order of fried chicken you can get, Crisp ain’t cheap. Of course the restaurant uses good chicken, fresh and never frozen, but still. Once you start asking yourself if these little crumb nuggets are worth twice as much as some other chicken place, it’s all downhill from there.

Intangibles: Crisp’s signature sauces—the Crisp BBQ sauce and the Seoul Sassy—were, in fact, really good. It’s a nice, clean shop. There are benches and tables and places to eat. The restaurant has a really nice pop selection, including Tahitian Treat. The kimchi side was pretty authentic, though the restaurant really needs to step its fry game up, as its french fries were pretty bland and limp. One dining buddy noted that he was disappointed they weren’t playing K-Pop, instead opting for kind of bland indie rock like Feist and The Shins. From your mouth to the iPod god’s ears, pal.

Stray observations: As a quasi-Korean place, the restaurant has bibimbap, though it has Anglo-fied the name, calling it a “Big Boy Buddha.” Well, at least they kept the three b’s, right?

Rating, out of 10: Five. This is tough because everyone—at least everyone we’ve talked to—loves, loves, loves Crisp. For our dime, though, it’s just not that great. The sauces are good, and if everything was slathered in them, Crisp might be worth a re-visit. As a plain old fried chicken place, though, Crisp just isn’t that great. Its sides are kind of lackluster, its prices are high, and its chicken’s just okay.

Coming up for Fried Chicken Fridays: Feed, Army And Lou’s, Pollo Campero, and more.