It was a tale of two chicken restaurants. Sweet Dixie Kitchen — a hipstery join in Long Beach, CA — had great reviews on Yelp… until one reviewer came along and blew up their scene. He called them out for selling Popeyes chicken.
Here is what the reviewer, Tyler H of Los Angeles, CA wrote on the review platform:
Before my friends and I got seated we saw them quickly bring in two large boxes of Popeyes to the kitchen. I ordered the Chicken and Waffles to see whether or not they were serving Popeye’s to their customers. I thought the chicken tasted suspiciously like Popeye’s and was also rather stale.
I kindly asked our waiter how they cooked their fried chicken. After checking he admitted that they do in fact use Popeyes.
Instead of denying the charge, Sweet Dixie Kitchen owner, Kimberly Sanchez replied to the review, saying they “Proudly serve Popeye’s spicy tenders.” And later stated in a Facebook post that, “We have never claimed we make each and every item.”
Right. But this isn’t sourcing bread from an artisan bakery, this is buying chicken premade, from the drive thru at a national fast food chain. A chain that is readily available nearby. A chain which the menu calls “Local Louisiana Fried Chicken” which… there’s a Popeye’s one mile from the restaurant, so to say it’s local is both technically correct and highly disingenuous (“local” food is meant to be sustainably sourced, to buy factory farmed chicken from a grocery store around the block from your restaurant, wouldn’t make it local).
Sanchez’s Facebook post included the following lines:
We use a ready made chicken — and always have — even before we decided to go with a certain chain as opposed to a food distributor brand fried chicken.
And…
We will continue our business the same way we have always done — honest that we make nearly all from scratch, saying what we do make from scratch, and when we can’t, we will use the second best thing available to us. And we will be glad to let you know which is which — just like we always have.
The restaurant also updated their “About” page on Facebook to specifically call out the chicken. Still, people were going to naturally feel deceived and they headed to Yelp to state their case:
But if the chicken is good, does it even matter?
The fact is that restaurants do outsource, though this seems a little extreme (again, it’s a major protein) still, if the food is good, people may not care. If, on the other hand, the food isn’t good, or the public stops visiting because they want sustainably sourced and freshly cooked chicken, Sweet Dixie will have to make a tough choice.
For now, it seems like the worst of all worlds: They’re double frying the chicken, as the crew from Foodbeast found out yesterday.
The video is a funny — and nuanced — take on the whole thing. And the Foodbeast crew seems mad for the right reason: Chicken from Popeyes is one thing, but dry chicken is something no food lover can abide.
