I’m a forty-two-year-old man queuing for a viral burger at Dave’s Hot Chicken. Surely nothing good can come of this. Everything viral is shit. Fact. Like the ice cube challenge, herpes, gastroenteritis, tikky-tocky dances, cakes that look like meat, the flu, Supernova, and Coldplay memes. It’s never, ever, good. From the door I can see the graffiti interior, the plastic UFO, and the neon sign that says ‘out of this world’. I can see people filming themselves eating their food like it’s now normal to watch the results of poor parenting in reel time. I don’t need this shit in my life; I had food equating to four Michelin stars at our wedding breakfast for Christ’s sake.
Twenty five minutes later they are taking my order. ‘Dave’s Number Three’, which I assume to be a piss and a shit at the same time, but in reality is a slider that is nothing of the sort, and a tender that’s nothing of the sort, with some crinkle chips that I upgraded for a quid to the cheesy ones. They ask if I’m okay with the pickles on the side to which I say yes. Of all the issues I have with Dave’s – and there a lot – I’ll say this; those pickles are possibly the worst thing happening on that tray. Thick cut and so full of pickling liquor the insides fall out and the circumference doesn’t want to be eaten at all, like some mutant onion ring.
For more information visit Dave’s Hot Chicken City Menus.
There’s something off about the chicken that I think comes mostly down to the size of it. The tenders are the size of my palm, like they were turkey, or something worse. I ask for the reaper sauce but apparently you have to sign a waiver for that and I’ve already wasted long enough, so it’s extra hot; a claggy powdered yet still greasy ordeal of tough chicken that’s been slightly burnt in too hot an oil. Nothing complex about the seasoning, it’s mostly chilli powder and misery. It comes, as it should, on cheap white bread, but this bread has gone slightly stale. The slider is more of the massive creature, hot this time but tasting exactly the same, on a sweaty cob with clumsily made slaw so that every time I bite down on something hard I can’t tell if it’s poorly made pickles, poorly made chicken, or poorly made slaw.
The bill is £18.70 including a vanilla milkshake topped with lucky charms that I enjoyed far more than I should. This isn’t a kicking for kicking sake, it’s a kicking that I fell for this nonsense too. On the day I go, Sophie asks where I heard of it to which I show her three instagram reels I’d saved, all from London, that made it look far nicer than it was. The goons who pull pieces of chicken in two and eat it with the grace of a shitting dog. The same five words to describe everything. The face pulling and licking of lips. I watched and I followed their steps. I wish I’d switched off and carried on with life.
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