Fried Chicken Friday

It's been a long week, but we made it through.  To celebrate the fact that we made it to the weekend, we decided to order delivery from a local black owned fried chicken restaurant, Gus's Fried Chicken.  There's something about fried chicken that's amazingly comforting, so we were really excited for our meal and tracked the order the entire way to our apartment.  When our delivery came, I unpacked the order and thought to myself, "but where's the chicken?"  We ordered the 8-piece chicken as well as the items below - fried pickles, fried green tomatoes, coleslaw, mac & cheese and 1 extra fried chicken thigh (in case the 8 pieces wasn't enough).  Someone somehow forgot the main part of our order - the chicken!

So we enjoyed our sides and the one piece of chicken we had and tried to order another 8-piece set of chicken from Gus's.  Unfortunately, they closed before they were able to fill our second order, so we decided to order fried chicken from another local restaurant.

Although Al's Hot Chicken is not a black owned business, we were in the mood for fried chicken and the 1 piece we split between the two of us was not cutting it.  So we ordered 1/2 a chicken "medium" spicy for Ryan and a 1/4 chicken (thigh and leg) "mild" for me.  It was an interesting process of comparing and contrasting two different fried chicken joints which led me to the following conclusions:

• Gus's fried chicken is legit - even ordering delivery, the crust of the chicken was thick and crispy and had a great kick of spice
• When you're spicing your hot chicken, you need to put the spices in the breading and cook the chicken in it.  Gus's (pictured above) did this and Al's (pictured below) did not.  You can visually see the difference between the two and one is a clear winner.
• If you're going to call it "hot chicken," it better be dang hot.  Yes, I did order mild chicken from Al's, but I'm used to food being really spicy when the word "hot" is in the name.  Ryan and I were both a little disappointed in the spice level of the so-called hot chicken.  And then there was Gus's chicken that wasn't even called hot chicken that had a great kick to it. 

The moral of this story is this: not all fried chicken is created equal.  While Al's hot chicken satisfied our fried chicken craving, we were definitely disappointed that we weren't able to get more of Gus's chicken.  Gus's was just the quintessential, perfectly done fried chicken and sides and we will definitely be ordering from there again.  So if you're in the LA area and looking for some delicious food and a way to support a black owned business, order from Gus's.  You won't be disappointed!