Honey Butter Fried Chicken

There has been a trend in restaurants in recent years that has been tending away from fine dining.  It can be fairly easy to scale down a restaurant's cuisine by making their food less complex and using lower quality ingredients.  If this is done though, the restaurant is likely to be pretty mediocre and runs the risk of closing quickly.  It is possible to maintain the quality of the food without aiming for fine dining but it is more difficult.  Honey Butter Fried Chicken uses high quality ingredients to make fast food.  While the food at Honey Butter Fried Chicken is essentially fast food, the hours that the restaurant keeps are essentially restaurant hours, 5-10 PM, and they also have a bar.  I arrived a little early on a week night to get my meal to go and there were already people waiting at the door.  When the door opened, we waited in line to place hour orders from a counter with the menu behind them like a fast food restaurant. (We were also handed menus at the door).  I was behind a person who seemed to be absolutely miserable and wanted to complain about everything but I didn't let the person get me down.  The dining area is fairly simple with many 2-tops for seating and a waiting counter where a person who is getting a take-out order could stand and wait with a drink.  The people that took my orders and presented my food and drink were very friendly and accommodating although I didn't order anything special.  The specialty of Honey Butter Fried Chicken is the chicken and of course I ordered the chicken, but the sides are nothing to sneeze at either.  I ordered a Kale and Cabbage Slaw with Dried Pomegranate and Yogurt Cumin Dressing.  The slaw was crisp and fresh and had a nice vegetal flavor.  There was a lot of pomegranate in the slaw which added a bittersweet fruity flavor.  The fact that the cells were dried enhanced the pomegranate flavor, and the yogurt cumin dressing was sour and spicy.  The dressing was added lightly so it didn't overwhelm the other flavors.  It was a very good combination and a pretty good salad.

The chicken could be ordered in 2, 4, or 8 piece servings (as well as on a sammy or served with grits).  I ordered the 4 piece which was served with 2 corn muffins and a dollop of honey butter.  The butter is to be spread on the chicken and muffins both but I decided to try each first without the honey butter to get an idea of the base flavor.  The corn muffins were lightly sweet and had a coarse texture.  The chicken was brined and was very juicy.  It was also very flavorful chicken.  The breading was very good.  It was crispy, salty, and a little spicy.  The honey butter added a buttery sweetness to whatever it was on, but I think that I preferred the chicken with very little butter if any at all.  It was very good chicken and if I had not first had the chicken from Parson's, I might say that it was some of the best fried chicken that I have had.

The dessert list at Honey Butter Fried Chicken is pretty sparse, consisting of a cookie and a dump cake.  As I was traveling with it, I didn't think that a dump cake would travel well so I went with the cookie.  It was a Chocolate Toffee Cocoa Nib Cookie.  It was pretty large but it was also pretty thin so it was kind of crunchy around the edges.  It was kind of like a crunchy chocolate chip cookie and while chocolate chip cookies are a favorite of mine, I like my cookies a little less crisp.

The chicken here was good and the staff was friendly so I can understand the buzz about this place.  While I do like Parson's chicken better, I would recommend this place.