What are Carl, Ron, and Jack all up to?
Australians consume on average 44kg of chicken a year, and each year, this figure continues to grow. It convincingly punches as our most popular protein; you don't have to look far to see evidence of this with Domino's, Hungry Jack's, McDonald's, and others, all bolstering their bird offerings. Below is a sampling of what's hot and what's not in the frenzy of fried chicken.
Photo 1. Original Recipe from KFC, the box, and Wicked Wings (from L to R).
Kentucky Fried Chicken (8/10): Nostalgia seeps throughout food, art, and music. Its current ubiquity harks back to a time before COVID when everything was more comforting. KFC evokes nostalgia, branding itself back to 'Kentucky Fried Chicken', restaurants across Australia feature old photos, vintage fonts, and old-school boxes. With a history in Australia since 1968, we set KFC as the benchmark for fast food fried chicken. How do the newer purveyors of frizzle stack up?
Photo 2. Photograph of the Colonel at work and a Zinger Burger unwrapped (from L to R).
Carl's Jr. (6/10): Yes, this is the one that's called Hardee's in the Eastern States, and Carl's Jr. on the West Coast. Quietly arriving and expanding in Australia since 2017, Carl offers a deceptively decent array of fried chicken, in burger, tenders, and star form. The biggest drawcard is their ranch sauce that is luxuriantly creamy with slight acidity, making it different enough to any mayonnaise or aioli one might usually have. The chicken is "hand-breaded", and thankfully, presents itself in a ruffle that is more restrained than that from KFC or Red Rooster. This wonderful dredge is peppery with a close coating that provides varied textures, crunch, and interest, throughout a single piece. This is the most unique fried chicken we tasted (others just attempt to copy KFC), so it's definitely worth a try to see if it's to your liking. Regretfully, it can be quite dry sometimes, a higher turnover is needed to keep it fresh.
Photo 3. Carl's Jr. box of tenders with ranch sauce on the side. The ruffled contents then revealed (From L to R).
Red Rooster (7.5/10): The reason this burger looks delicious is simple geometry. The radius of the chicken is greater than the radius of the bun. Looks can be deceiving, but not in this case. Red Rooster's Spicy Fried Burger outranks all others. It starts off with a wonderfully inside-toasted potato roll, includes two crispy fried tenders, and then unlike other spicy burgers where the kick is all in the breading, the Rooster drops an astonishing hot sauce over it all. This hot sauce slaps - think slightly Asian, with citrus, ginger and garlic notes, alongside fragrant Sichuan and black peppers. To top it off, the burger includes whole egg mayo and the cabbage-lettuce blend, which actually provides better texture and further crunch - who even liked soggy lettuce shreds anyway? The Spicy Burger goes gourmet, and it pays off, with Red Rooster having one of the better fried chicken burgers out there. On the other hand, their fried chicken resembles KFC's, it's juicy, crunchy, and crispy, but the taste is the let-down, and let's be honest, this is important. Without those 11 secret herbs and spices, not much can be done here. Overall though, Red Rooster is onto a winner.
Photo 4. Contents from Red Rooster's Spicy Box: Spicy Tender burger and Fried Chicken piece (from L to R).
Dominos (1/10): The menu at Dominos has a section completely dedicated to “Chicken Sides”, with everything from tenders and wings to meatballs and "small bites". The buttermilk chicken pieces sound deluxe, but are ridiculously not. These started at a whopping $7.85 for five tiny morsels, arranged in a mini pizza box like a high school geometry set. Except where the geometry set case is totally crammed, the pizza box remains disappointingly empty. If you look at the cross-section in the photos as well, you'll notice the pinkish actual chicken in the middle, pumped out by an inexplicable 'meal' of some sort. This sheath of unidentified material gave the “chicken” a real bounce as you picked it up and chomped right through it. Like over-cosmetically enhanced lips, it’s alluring, but not exactly enticing.
Photo 5. Dominos' paltry offering of Wings with Frank's Hot Sauce, buttermilk chicken pieces, and one bisected to reveal minimal chicken.
For the wings, running them through the pizza oven just made them wet and slippery. The wings were touched by the oven, but the process of cooking was more akin to steaming. There was a very sound herb seasoning to the wings, but overall, a hard pass on these offerings from Dominos.
Photo 6. Classic Jack's Fried Chicken burger and Pop'n Chick'n from Hungry Jack's (from L to R).
Hungry Jack's (4/10): The breading has the crunch of a pub schnitzel, encasing the chicken breast like a Kiwi shoe polish tin. It’s seasoned with some unidentifiable vegetable dust that is more peppery than savoury. Indeed, the chicken retains the shape forced upon it in the freezer, locked up in patty form. Interestingly, the inside is rather fleshy and isn’t overly fibrous. Nor is it clammy or obviously processed blended meat. A scant amount of lettuce plays stuck in the mud with the glutinous mayonnaise on the top underlayer of the brioche bun. This is somewhat disappointing considering the stunning 4K photos of this burger that shows it proudly brimming with iceberg lettuce. The Classic Jack’s Fried Chicken is certainly not their most notable body of work. Pop’n Chick’n - hot trash in a cup. Suspicious meat nuggets imitating popcorn chicken. Definitely some extra flour or starch injected into them to 'roid them up. Overall, seems like the burgers aren't better at Hungry Jack's.
Pizza Hut (3/10): First impression was that they were moist and disconcertingly soft inside. The way the heat was jammed into each wing suggests it wasn’t deep fried, at least on-site. It was giving off microwaved restaurant food vibes, so potentially they were done in the pizza oven. The Buffalo sauce that coated the wings was quite acidic and overwhelmingly vinegar-heavy, with only a smidge of cayenne flavour. A real Buffalo sauce has the heat to balance the vinegar. Despite picking the “seasoned” choice, there was very little happening in that space. That could have been an easy win. On a positive note, the wings had nice little curls of crisp on them and looked very appealing visually.
Photo 7. Pizza Hut's Buffalo sauce wings from their WingStreet menu.
McDonald's (7/10): Touching down at Singapore Changi airport, the first thing one goes for is not Tian Tian Chicken Rice or radish cake, it's a McSpicy. Born in Singapore, a favourite of students and bankers alike, the famed top-selling burger is now available in Australia. It's a single piece of fried leg or thigh meat (for once not dry breast in a burger - how amazing!), that mixes a delicious crumb between the usual Macca's chicken spices and an assortment of chilli spice. The result is a burger that is familiar and comforting yet piquantly different. Maccas' buns are on point at the moment, less yellow and more browned, and they seem to be the only ones who can procure copious amounts of fresh, crisp, iceberg lettuce, that isn't shredded to mush but retains shape, form, and crunch. It's extremely delicious. Chicken McNuggets with mustard sauce is the go - change my mind.
Photo 8. The McSpicy from McDonald's.
Ibis Tip: Some of the better products include:
KFC Wicked wings and Original recipe
Red Rooster Spicy Tender Burger
McDonald's McSpicy burger
Ibis Tip: If you're ever in the States, try some of these fried chicken chains: Popeye's, Chick-Fil-A, Hattie B's, Jollibee, Zaxby's, Shake Shack, Raising Cane's, Wingstop, Church's.
Ibis Note: This review doesn't include the fried chickens of Asia, think Korean Fried Chicken (the other KFC), Ayam Goreng, Hot Star, and Two Peck. Stay tuned for a further Ibis article covering all of these offerings.