The company, founded in 2017 on a purported $900 pooled by four friends, is expert at promotion. But so what? Or, rather, I should hope it's good chicken, as it's all they do. That was a waiver worth requiring.ĭave's Hot Chicken makes good chicken: moist, flavorful, more to my preference than KFC or Popeye's. Once, at the Coxsackie pub Cask and Rasher, a fearsome creation called the Necro-Wing, studded with Indian ghost chiles, caused me, after a single bite, to spasm with hiccups. The lamb phaal at Karavalli in Latham would nod condescendingly at Dave's Reaper chicken and say, "Keep trying, kid." Requested super spicy, the papaya-based som tum at the former Kinnaree in Albany would outpace Dave's Reaper in a spice mile by a full track lap, and it was a salad. I'd guess two or three Reaper tenders eaten consecutively, without the cooling effects of bread, pickles or in a slider preparation, might be challenging even for some who like spicy food.īut the claimed heat level and its attendant waiver are more hype than reality. The Reaper, the only remaining step up for Dave's customers, is indeed seriously hot. Extra hot has considerably more kick, though no more so than, for example, the extra hot wing sauce that is my default at McGeary's Pub in Albany. The medium barely stirred my palate's spice needle. For comparison's sake, I also ordered medium and extra hot, all three as sliders. Well! As someone who convened a table of spice hounds to taste the area's fieriest restaurant dishes for a Times Union story, I felt obligated to try the Reaper at Dave's Hot Chicken. The chain capitalizes on the explosion a few years back of the Nashville Hot Chicken preparation, based on cayenne-loaded frying oil dousing the chicken, and more recently on the spicy-chicken-sandwich wars fought by national chains.Īn even bigger shtick from Dave's Hot Chicken is those ordering Reaper-spiced chicken are required to sign a waiver that takes up about 4 inches of receipt paper and warns that consumption could lead to harm, including but not limited to "bodily injury, property damage, emotional distress or even death." The big shtick is the spice level, in seven steps: No Spice, Lite Mild, Mild, Medium, Hot, Extra Hot and Reaper. Mac-n-cheese is available as a side, as is a container of the kale slaw. Most combos include fries, and everything comes with a creamy condiment called Dave's Sauce, which seems to be predominantly mayo and adobo sauce, plus a little added sweetness. You can get it as a plain tender, meaning it comes with a slice of white bread and pickles, or the exact same piece of chicken as a slider, on a bun with pickles and a smidgen of kale slaw (cheese optional). It has one thing, basically, a tender that looks to be no more than 4 ounces. There was room for standing inside, but the whole place is only about 2,500 square feet, and there's table seating for about 40, so most people waiting were outside.Īnd they were waiting for fried chicken tenders. Despite the all-day rain and temperatures in the low to mid-30s, lines still formed.
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