As I was leaving Big Chicken in Hixson on a drizzly Friday afternoon, a man who was beelining from the back of the parking lot to the entrance slowed down long enough to ask, “Is it worth it?”
I don’t believe the weather alone made him wonder if he should have made other lunchtime plans, as the drive-thru was closed because the window wasn’t working. As grand opening kinks go, that’s an odd one, but it wasn’t the only peculiarity I’d encountered during my visit.
I’d braved the rainfall, too, as I crossed the packed lot an hour earlier to try Chattanooga’s newest chicken joint, a fast-casual franchise operating coast to coast. Located locally in Hixson, Big Chicken is the brainchild of former basketball superstar Shaquille O’Neal, commonly known as “Shaq.”
Shaq took on some tough opponents on the court and retired with four championship rings and three MVP awards. However, when it comes to fried chicken, he’s still a rookie, with only a relative handful of seasons under his belt.
So, curious about Shaq’s attempt to take on Chick-fil-A – along with KFC, Popeyes, Church’s, the locally owned and operated Champy’s and the rest of the many options for southern fried fowl in Chattanooga – I stepped inside and found myself in the middle of a very long line.
“No cutting,” joked a young woman with a baby as I gathered my bearings. At least I think she was joking. Not wanting to get between a hungry mother and her next meal, I made the trek to the back of the line.
You’ll be grateful for the wait your first time at Big Chicken. It’s not that the menu is oversized, like its 7-foot-1 founder; it’s that everything looks good, and you’ll need time to decide.
Granted, I was famished, which means a bowl of Grape-Nuts would have made me drool, but scroll through the selections at www.bigchicken.com/menu and tell me if I’m wrong.
First, click on “Mains,” which is how Big Chicken spells “sandwich.” Three options caught my eye, including the BBQ Chicken Alert (fried chicken breast, muenster cheese, fried onions, sweet-and-smokey Memphis barbecue sauce), the Crispy Chicken Grilled Cheese (which should be self-explanatory) and The Original Big Chicken (fried chicken breast, Shaq sauce and pickles).
If you like heat, Big Chicken will happily serve you an Uncle Jerome’s Nashville Hot, and if you’re not concerned about maintaining clean arteries, there’s The Ultimate, a behemoth stacked with a fried chicken breast, macaroni and cheese, fried onions and roasted garlic barbecue aioli. Be sure to order the large fries to complete the theme of your meal.
Big Chicken keeps the sides simple with a handful of selections: crinkle cut fries, dirty fries (cheese sauce, bacon, banana peppers and chipotle barbecue), sweet potato fries, Lucille’s Mac N’ Cheese (which comes topped with a Cheez-It crust) and Jalapeno Slaw (made with smokey vinaigrette and cilantro).
Sweets include a variety of shakes and sundaes.
I opted for an Original Big Chicken and sides of macaroni and cheese and coleslaw.
I also ordered watermelon and strawberry punch, which gave rise to the first peculiarity. Instead of handing me an empty cup, my cashier filled a cup halfway with punch and then told me to get ice from the soda fountain.
“Huh,” I thought as punch splashed out of my cup while I was adding ice. Maybe there’s a health code in Hixson that forbids Big Chicken from turning around the punch dispenser so I can serve myself. Either way, it’s weird, as well as inconvenient, since I have to interrupt the counter staff if I want more.
Whatever. That’s a small thing that applies only to fans of punch. What’s important is the food.
As I waited for my meal, another thought occurred to me. Several people had ordered sundaes, and were watching them melt as they waited for their chicken. While ordering dessert after the meal would have been better, no one would want to stand in line twice; there are only so many hours in a day.
The only solutions to this quirk are skipping the sundae, eating dessert first (not a bad option, actually), heading to DQ after Big Chicken or telling none of your friends about Big Chicken in an effort to shorten the line. To that end, please hide this issue of the Herald after you read it.
As I gazed at my Original Big Chicken several minutes later, I realized another oddity. One of the unwritten rules of fast food is that photos of a Whopper, Crunchwrap or slice of pizza must always look better than the actual product. But I was holding the biggest, crispiest, juiciest fried chicken breast I’d seen between the two halves of a bun. When I compared the real thing to the image online, I chuckled: My lunch looked even better than the picture.
And it tasted far better than a bowl of Grape-Nuts. The well-seasoned chicken came as close to the flavor of my dad’s pan-fried chicken as anything I’ve ever eaten, and that’s paying it a high compliment. Combined with the tart pickle slices and the tasty Shaq Sauce (which is similar to Chick-fil-A’s sauce, but with a kick), it was delicious.
The slaw, not so much. I feel like it’s one of those things people will either love or hate – and I didn’t love it. The cabbage was soggy, possibly because it was drowned in vinaigrette, and my cup was stuffed with jalapeno slices. No thank you.
To the restaurant’s credit, one of the staff members allowed me to swap out the slaw for a mound of scrumptious sweet potato fries.
Fortunately, Lucille’s Mac N’ Cheese made up the lost ground. It was the definition of warm, melty, carb-packed comfort food, which is precisely what macaroni and cheese should be.
As I stepped back into the drizzle, a final thought occurred to me. A modern blues musician can faithfully replicate one of the genre’s standards (let’s say “Nobody Knows You When You’re Down and Out” by famed Chattanoogan Bessie Smith) without innovating, and it can still be a pleasure to hear. It’s the same with Big Chicken’s food: It might not break new ground, but Shaq makes a mean sandwich.
So, when the customer who beelining from the back of the parking lot to the entrance slowed down long enough to ask, “Is it worth it?” I said, “Give the man another championship ring.”