Chicken Express

This would be a great place to open a restaurant! Chicken was good, but there was no cole slaw - at noon on Easter Sunday. They were also out of hot rolls, no longer serve biscuits, and we had to wait 8 minutes while they made more rolls. They weren't even busy and had only one other customer. No adult management on site. Also, the facility is in disrepair, wallpaper peeling off the walls and restrooms were dingy with extensive damage to the wood doors. Very disappointing. Won't stop here again.

The Chicken Express/Taco Express is the absolute greatest food establishment in the history of time.  There is nothing, NOTHING that compares with being able to have a piece of fried chicken with tacos.  Why no one has thought of this before is a mystery to me.  Everything on that menu is magical.

If the Colonel were still alive today, he would probably be eating at Chicken Express rather than at one of his own restaurants ...

It's sad to say, but KFC is no comparison against this fledgling chain begun in Benbrook, Texas back in 1988 (according to their company web site).  They only have 100 stores in Texas and the nearby states, but I think that they definitely have the formula down ...

I was hungry, so I ordered the 7-piece tenders meal, with an extra side vegetable just to be sure I'd be satiated.  Well, I knew something was different when I watched the counter gal trying to stack all of my items on one plate, that being a very large and thick Styrofoam one, much bigger than anything I had EVER seen at any of the other fast food joints.

To transport all my vittles to the table, I had to request a second plate just to cradle my roll, various dipping sauces (they gave me two of each, honey mustard and barbecue), and even a few honey packets.  

Which brings me to an important side note: the honey served here is pure grade A and is actually REAL honey.  At KFC, they only serve you "honey sauce."  Can you guess what honey sauce is made of?  Yup, that favorite food additive with its own advertising campaign designed to convince you it's safe to eat: high fructose corn syrup.

But back to the bird.  First and foremost, the tenders were perhaps the most tender chicken I had ever consumed in a restaurant setting.  Better than Grandy's, Kentucky Fried Chicken, Popeye's, or Church's.  I doubt I would even be able to make it like that at home.  I'm talking moist, with fine texture and good taste.  The batter was light and not laden with grease, either.  From the first bite, I could tell that this was a much higher grade of chicken than the tough carcasses that some of the other chicken shacks pass off for edible.

As for my sides, I was happy to see that my corn wasn't the measly half or quarter piece of mushy cob you might expect.  No sir, it was the ENTIRE corn cob, served complete with wooden skewers to make dining easier.  Believe it or not, the kernels still had a little bit of snap to them.  The Cole slaw was OK, but it was quite cold, reassuring me that it was safe to eat.

By the time I chomped my way through four tenders, one roll, a few fork fulls of Cole slaw, and the corn, I was completely stuffed.  But the chicken was so good, I held back on the veggies and decided that I would finish off the tenders.  I alternated between the honey mustard, barbecue, and the big bowl of white cream gravy that came with the meal.

I normally don't get so excited about fast food and fried chicken, but this place was so above the norm that I felt I HAD to write up something.  You like to dine on fried chicken every now and then when the hankering hits you?  Take Highway 281 the next time you are traveling between Austin and Fort Worth and stop in Hamilton for lunch.  You'll find out for yourself that the Colonel's secret recipe of eleven herbs and spices is highly overrated.