San Diego Unseen: An Urban Portrait
- Photo by Amy T. Granite
Sucking your fingers in the throes of a fried-chicken dinner is a social norm, no matter where you are. So, go ahead and mouth your hands like a toddler in between crunchy, juicy bites and wipe the greasy remains on a pant leg in celebration of this meal’s freedom from manners, utensils and grace.
Fried chicken tastes best late-night, so when the rest of the city’s sawing logs, I’m making a mess of myself at Best of the Best Quality Chicken (4768 Convoy St.), open till midnight Monday through Thursday, 2 a.m. Friday and Saturday and 11 p.m. Sunday. The signage can be confusing for first-timers who understand the acronym “BBQ” as something else—but the unmistakable waft of chicken-fry that’ll fill your nostrils from the parking lot assures that anything but slow-smoked meat is to come.
Instead, brace yourself for slow-fried chicken, a technique mastered by Koreans that puts most “Southern” styles to shame with its chicharon-like skin that’s achieved from a cornstarch batter. When twice-fried in extra-virgin olive oil, it forms a single crunchy barrier between eager teeth and soft, moist meat. If you don’t call 20 minutes in advance like the website and to-go menu instruct, prepare to wait in the odd-shaped, former Pizza Hut dining room at a dark booth; a sobering, fluorescent lit-table; or in front of the lone computer by the booster chairs—there for your internet-surfing pleasure.
Five pieces of the Olive Original Chicken are enough to feed two for $9.95 and come with a pleasant yet unnecessary five-spice barbecue-style sauce for dipping. When I bit into a drumstick, it lacked the essence of fryer flavor that taints chicken everywhere; rather, olive oil penetrates to the bone and somehow makes this the least-greasy version I’ve eaten.
Too often, fried chickens fly the coop flavor- and texture-wise. Either the coating sheds in one reptilian slough just after picking it up, tendons and stringy meat snap like rubber bands or thick, unseasoned breading is a bitch to get through. Forget this, and your moral obligations to craft beer, at this place, where on Mondays, your first pitcher of Coors Lite costs 99 cents.
Amy blogs at saysgranite.com and you can follow her on Twitter @saysgranite.
