A lesson we learned a long time ago, but frequently fail to follow: Don’t attempt to visit a new restaurant on the day it opens. Especially not a chain restaurant.
It won’t be that bad, we thought. It’s off-peak, we reasoned. It’s fast food, or nearly so, and it won’t take us long, we fooled ourselves into believing as we tooled on by the new Slim Chickens, the first Little Rock outlet of a Fayetteville-based mini-chain that opened May 6 at 4500 W. Markham St., in the former Back Yard Burgers sit down spot across from the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences.
We had only an 18-minute wait in the line that nearly stretched out the front door, and about a 10-minute wait after we placed our to-go order. Relatively speaking, a piece of cake, or what would have been a piece of cake if Slim Chickens served cake. (The dessert list consists only of apple, chocolate and peach fried pies.)
Most of that day, according to the very weary manager we spoke to, it was worse. A lot worse.
Later in the week we popped in ahead of the dinner rush, and although apparently it had been super-busy most of that day, with two cash registers open and taking customers, the wait to order was brief, as was the time - about five minutes - for our order to come out of the semi-open kitchen, which is so constructed as to conveniently serve in-house and drive-through orders.
Slim Chickens’ menu focuses on two items: chicken tenders and chicken wings, in various combinations, plus tenders-based sandwiches and wraps. The Slim Chickens edge, or so it claims in the explanatory material on the back of the to-go material: It’s fresh chicken. As in, not previously frozen.
A lot of folks who went to school in Fayetteville, where Slim Chickens operates two restaurants, were flocking to the Little Rock outlet during its opening week, as were folks who had sampled the products at the siblings in Conway, Jonesboro or Rogers (there are three more in Oklahoma) and folks trying it for the first time.
Slim’s fresh chicken tenders do taste better, though not by a huge shot, than most of its competitors’ boneless products (just for fun, compare ’em to the new boneless chicken from KFC, which just happens to have an outlet across the street). Supposedly they’re cooked to order, which explains the slight-to-moderate wait.
But hey, folks, we’re talking chicken tenders and chicken wings. Not filet mignon. Not manna from heaven.
The Slim’s folks couldn’t be nicer or more eager to please, from the management right down to the folks who bring your food to your table (order at the register, get a number and your drink cup).
They’ve done a nice job remodeling the former Back Yard Burgers, providing seating for about 50 inside on hard-topped black tables with heavy black metal-framed but comfortably upholstered seats and booths along the walls. Four flat-screen TVs show sports and news channels. The expanded patio space now provides seating for about another 40.
The baseline offering on Slim’s menu board is the Chick’s Plate ($6.99), “three (3) tenders and one dipping sauce,” with Texas toast, with default side of fries (though supposedly you have a choice between those and potato salad), plus a medium drink.
“For a little extra,” the menu says, you can swap a side salad or one of the “Delta Classic Sides” - fried mushrooms ($4.99 a la carte), fried pickles ($4.49) or fried okra ($3.99).
Even with fries this is a lot of food - more than the kid stuff the name of the plate might imply (yes, there is a kids’ menu). The three tenders were pretty filling and the crisp-edged fries were plentiful. Other, perhaps more manly options, are the $8.49, five-tender Slim’s Plate and the $9.99, seven-tender Hungry Plate.
We also tried this plate with fried mushrooms (the “little extra” turned out to be a pretty big $1.99), which were delicious but not really properly drained, so the batter on the ones at the bottom of the paper-lined paper basket began to get a little soggy after a very few minutes.
That wasn’t a problem with the fried pickles (“little extra,” $1.49), extremely thin, battered fried dill pickle slices (some so thin you could only taste the batter, not the pickles). These held up a lot better, though some of them were incredibly salty.
The side items come with Slim’s Homemade Ranch dressing, which caused us a great deal of confusion. You see, we’d ordered our Chick’s Plate with blue cheese dipping sauce, but try as we might, we just couldn’t find any blue cheese or any blue cheese flavor in our plastic cup. That’s right, what we had opened up was the ranch. Of which, though Slim’s isn’t bad as ranch goes, we are not great fans. We got lucky, if you will: the next time we went by and opened the blue cheese dip first and were better pleased.
Speaking of dipping sauces, the honey mustard, while nothing to brag about, was pretty good. The barbecue, or BBQ , as Slim’s spells it, was a little thin and iffy about clinging to the tenders.
Slim’s wings are meaty and tasty, but soaking them in any one of seven sauces (mild, medium, hot, inferno, honey barbecue, spicy barbecue or teriyaki) makes gauging the “fresh” difference pretty difficult. The $8.99 Wing Plate gives you eight wings and one dipping sauce, or you can pair them with an equal number of tenders in the 3&3 ($8.99) or 5&5 ($10.99) plates.
Slim Chickens
Address: 4500 W. Markham St., Little Rock
Hours: 10:30 a.m.-10 p.m. daily
Cuisine: Chicken tenders, chicken wings
Credit cards: V, MC, AE, D
Alcoholic beverages: Beer permit pending
Reservations: No
Wheelchair accessible: Yes
Carryout: Yes
(501) 907-0111
slim-chickens.com
Weekend, Pages 40 on 05/23/2013