I have to imagine November 2012 was an interesting time for Guy Fieri. A week after Barack Obama was re-elected to office, Fieri’s Times Square restaurant, Guy’s American Kitchen & Bar, was panned by Pete Wells, the former New York Times food critic, in one of his most famous no-star ratings. The review was so brutal, we studied it in my college journalism courses. Fieri must have learned something, too.
In 2017, Guy’s American Kitchen & Bar closed. Aside from a short-lived ghost kitchen, Fieri hadn’t tried opening another restaurant in New York City — until this month.
Over the weekend, Fieri returned to Times Square with Chicken Guy!, a fried chicken chain he has been expanding across the country (138 W. 42nd Street, between Broadway and Sixth Avenue). It’s a big moment for the brand: Of the 25 locations that are open or coming soon, this is the first in New York City. The original Chicken Guy! opened in 2018 at the Walt Disney World Resort in Florida.
The scene: Times Square, of course, has changed since Fieri was there last. The neighborhood has become the epicenter of fast-casual fried chicken, with new locations of the Filipino brand Jollibee, Chick-fil-A, Raising Cane’s, and Birdbox, the offshoot of a Michelin-starred restaurant in San Francisco. That might explain why the crowds were thin on opening day at Chicken Guy!.
The Fieri spot was deserted an hour after doors opened at 11 a.m. on January 31. There were a couple of people seated toward the back of the restaurant, past the open kitchen and next to the Jumbotron playing reruns of Diners, Drive-ins, and Dives, but otherwise, the dining room was empty.
One of the best parts of visiting any fried chicken chain is the sensory overload: the stench of grease traps mixed with floor cleaner that smacks you when you walk through the door, and the sounds of diners crunching fried skin at nearby tables. So, when I waited for my order in odorless silence, I figured that I was in for it.
The chicken verdict: How was the fried chicken? Not that good. The chicken is shaped into cutlets and cooked in a pressure cooker, not a deep fryer. I’m sure that approach works elsewhere, but at Chicken Guy!, the pressurized chicken is dry and hard to get down, as if the Cinnamon Challenge was mixed with Donkey Sauce. The overcooked ends had the consistency of rock candy.
The original sandwich ($13 with fries and a drink) is a standard job that comes with two tenders, pickles, and a garlicky sauce. There are several variations available, but I’m not convinced that adding Buffalo macaroni and cheese or bourbon-brown sugar barbecue sauce can save it. For a better version of that exact dish, I’d head to any other chain in the neighborhood.
The fried chicken dumplings ($9 for five) were far worse, and don’t be fooled by the name — it’s the dumpling that’s fried, not the chicken inside. The breaded wrapper had an acceptable texture, but it was impossible to get past the taste because of the bacon bits and teriyaki sauce that were ladled over the top.
If you must go: Some of the non-chicken dishes were more successful. The chopped cheese egg rolls ($7) have potential; if you dust off the salt, you’re looking at a stoner substitution for the excellent cheesesteak egg rolls at P.J. Clarke’s. I didn’t mind the sludge-like texture of the apple cinnamon cereal shake ($7), either, given the generous, well-distributed pieces of Cinnamon Toast Crunch and Apple Jacks.
The (lack of) Fieri factor: Then again, no one is visiting Chicken Guy! for milkshakes: We want Fieri! And not the one on the flatscreen television at the back, the one who filmed 51 seasons — more than 500 episodes — of Diners, Drive-ins, and Dives.
I figured if there was ever a time he would make another appearance in Times Square, it would be at the grand opening of his comeback restaurant.
But no, last weekend, he was at a California Chicken Guy! in Hollywood.
