Guy Fieri return to NYC with gross Chicken Guy fast food
Chicken Guy — Guy Fieri’s new fast-casual spot at 136 West 42nd St. — is a case against second chances.
The last foray into New York City for the platinum-haired TV showman and “celebrity” chef, was a legendary fiasco.
Fieri’s mammoth Times Square restaurant — Guy’s American Kitchen & Bar — was a brutally reviewed laughingstock until it closed in 2017.
Chicken Guy is no better, proof that Flavortown has no place in the Big Apple.
Situated next to the new Planet Hollywood restaurant, Fieri’s latest might as well be called Planet Heart Failure.
Its fat-and-sugar bombs on buns pack up to nearly 1,000 calories each. “Flavortown Hand-Spun Shakes,” like the scary-green Triple Double Mint Shake, tip the scale at roughly 900 calories
That’s about the same as competing belly-bursters from Shake Shack, but at least those tend to be irresistibly delicious.
As a type-2 diabetic whose condition is enough under control to enjoy an occasional junk-food splurge, I wouldn’t object if Fieri’s products were edible or drinkable — but they ain’t.
They’re about one thing only: sugar fixes for poor souls who confuse crunch, crackle and slimy ooze for taste.
One of the brightly lit joint’s functional-but-charmless eating areas faces an open kitchen of sorts where cooks prepare and assemble the sandwiches. The counter’s too high to see much of what they’re up to, but large block letters across the front proclaim, “CAPITAL T TASTY.”
But “tasty” doesn’t apply to the menu’s main element — chicken.
I endured the pitiable poultry three ways in three different sandwich varieties.The simplest, the O.G. ($12.99 with fries and a 20-ounce beverage), was so evocative of a warm brick inside crispy Panko breading, I hesitated to try the more elaborate choices.
I couldn’t even slice through the meat with a plastic knife. Though the manager swore every piece was “made fresh,” it was as tough as it if had been cooked hours earlier and reheated after cooling its heels for a spell.
The miserable meat seemed eager to hide amidst the trimmings of the Bourbon Brown Sugar BBQ sandwich ($13.99 with fries and a drink). But the pepper jack cheese, sugary sauce, slaw, and pickles could only do so much to conceal the chicken’s truth.
The worst of the three was the Buffalo Mac and Cheese sandwich ($14.99 with fries and a drink), which is overloaded with smoked bacon, elbow macaroni, and garlic parmesan all scrunched into the bun.
All the elaborate trimmings — goo-slathered buns, semi-crisp bacon strips, sickly-sweet sauces — seem meant to function as a sort of culinary Novocaine, numbing diners’ tastebuds to the awfulness of the meat.
But they failed to anesthetize my taste buds sufficiently to the dry, flavorless chicken.
Then there was the Triple Double Mint Shake ($6.99). The presumed ambrosia of hand-spun mint chocolate soft serve, crushed Oreos, chocolate mints, chocolate syrup and whipped cream was too dense for me to suck more than a few drops through a straw — which was probably for the best, in terms of my health.
Fast-food chicken doesn’t have to be this bad. Fieri could learn from Popeye’s tasty, juicy birds.
Fieri’s expanding chain has 25 spots open or planned across the US. Please, Guy: spare us any more in the Big Apple.
We have enough hammer-wielding maniacs without getting mugged by concrete chicken.
