Summary
Chicken 10/20
Sides 6/10
Service 6/10
Magic 6/10
Total 28/50
The story
KFC Townhall is arguably the most famous KFC in Sydney. In the centre of the city and open until the wee hours, it’s a hub for late night revelry. It’s a KFC that I’ve been to many many times but very few of them sober and certainly none, like at the time of this review, sober on a Saturday night.
As a dedicated hobby jogger coming into race season, my body is a temple, and so I’m looking for new ways to spend my Saturday night. On this Saturday night my better half was having drinks with her friends at home, so I was shunted off into the cold dark night to find my own fun. I went to the flicks (Demon Slayer Mugen Train at George Street event cinema (would recommend the movie, the cinema smells like piss)) and treated myself to a succulent, nutritious meal of KFC.
The order
I ordered the definitive KFC meal, the three-piece quarter pack, for the low low price of $11.95. Note that it’s called a three-piece box these days, but not all change is progress and so a quarter pack it remains in my books.
To quickly recap for those at the back, the three-piece quarter pack has 3 pieces of chicken (two large and one small), a medium chips, a potato and gravy, a bread roll, and your choice of refreshing beverage.
Unfortunately, as I’ll go into further later, there were no options to make any further specification on my order so I was forced to accept whatever the capricious staff wanted to put in front of me.
Chicken – 10/20
Dead set average.
Below 10 is an insult and above is ok. The bubble is one of those little compromises that wears us down day by day but that we accept and soldier through.
As previously indicated, I didn’t have the opportunity to specify my pieces. I was given the rib (an unsung hero imho), a classic drumstick, and a dreaded thigh.
First to the major highlight. The rib had an extra crunchy piece of additional coating attached to it. This is just visible in the picture below nestled into the curve of the drum. I must admit to feeling some guilt for taking that piece off some other poor shmuck but look, there are snakes and ladders in life and this was a ladder.
The rib was well coated and just what a rib ought to be. A chewy lump of white meat protruding to one side and a downhill curve of greasy tender brown meat sloping away to a line of rib and spine bones that act as a magnet for crunchy points of coating. If I were to review the chicken purely on the rib it’d be a solid 9.
However, I am not reviewing purely on the rib. The drum was unfortunately substandard with a gooey coating and a long nub of inedible skin stretching down from the handle end. It wasn’t at all inedible, but it didn’t live up to the standards set by the best of its breed.
Last, and emphatically least, is the thigh. As my regular readers will know the thigh is my most despised piece of chicken but this one took the cake even as thighs go. I was starved half to death after riding my bike down and was hungry enough to give it a good go. All I got for my positive attitude was a gelatinous mess of sludgy brown chicken with a wallpaper paste textured coating. Negative points for the thigh, 10/20 overall.
Sides – 6/10
Another mixed bag here on the sides. The bread roll was a little stale, and the chips were under seasoned, although well cooked. Because I had no option to ask for them to be salted up further it was especially frustrating.
Where things really got interesting though was in the gravy. The taste of the gravy, and the lump to grease mix were both fantastic. I made sure to snap a picture to illustrate just what I mean by the gravy lumps. Too many lumps is yuky (you don’t want to feel like you need to chew your gravy) but too few clearly indicates that it hasn’t been greased up at all. This was perfect! It was also, however, badly let down by a dreadful potato to gravy ratio. This bad boy was at least 75% potato, which is about 20% too high.
For a drink I went for a mountain dew. I haven’t had a mountain dew in years and consider it to be the dangerous cousin of the pepsi soft drink family. I’ve long believed there to be a correlation (not causation) between mountain dew and criminality but am yet to have the opportunity to study it beyond anecdotally. If you’re aware of any appropriate research funding mechanisms, please leave a comment on my myspace page. Anyway, it was pretty tight so maybe crime does pay.
Service – 6/10
Ummm this is tough.
The staff are sheltered behind a giant glass cage, whether to keep them in or to keep the customers out, it’s impossible to say. In the riotous atmosphere of a late Saturday night, they’re striving manfully to do gods work and they’re delivering. The food’s fast, the crowd’s kept at bay, and they deserve credit.
However, the overall impact, of the order machines, glass cages, and order numbers being screamed at top volume is a substandard food experience. All the effort in the world won’t get you to the moon without a rocket and so, unfortunately, it’s a 6 for service.
Of note, there was a trainee (I could tell because she was forced to wear a badge that said so) who was cleaning the tables upstairs where I was eating. She’d taken what appeared to be a dance break and was sitting in one of the corners wearing full uniform, plus rubber gloves, having a boogey by herself. I nodded at her in encouragement, and she looked at me like I was a psychopath. Bold.
Magic – 6/10
The place is a spilled Sunkist away from chaos, but the reality is that you wouldn’t have it any other way. Like a spring on the savanna that’s drawing in predators and prey there’s a delicately poised balance that’s all the more beautiful for the tension it creates. And like the spring, the KFC is the heart of the late-night ecosystem and absolutely integral to the environment it sustains.
All good stuff. However! There was another mural of the great man (see image) and some cheeky prick had painted what I can only take to be a gravy stain on his tie. Disrespect engenders disrespect. 6.
Mingin or Finger lickin?
Mingin 😦
KFC Reviews 