Popeye's

In a word: "I yam what I yam."

The specs: #0493 
Address, hours & details via Isthmus; reviews at ; official web site.

JM ate the nugget combo with mashed potatoes and a fountain drink.
Nichole ate the 2-piece dark meat spicy Bonafide dinner with Cajun fries and a fountain drink.
The red beans & rice and a spare chicken biscuit came home with us.
The bill was $14, or $7/person.
JM and Nichole gave Popeye's a B (see our grading rubric).

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In the alternate universe where we choose where we go out to eat, if we needed fried chicken and Doug's were open, we'd choose Doug's. Back in our life, we found Popeye's to be just fine, especially for fast food. One of the two dining rooms has big, comfortable booths that would lend itself to large groups. 

Popeye's fried chicken itself was delicious. The dark meat (all we tried) was very moist, the batter spicy and not just salty. JM's basket of 9 "Louisiana nuggets" had more than 9 discrete pieces. The meat was closer to real than the chopped and pressed (some say extruded) stuff inside those most famous nuggets we all know.

We were disappointed in the biscuits, though. These are more an approximation than an achievement of flakiness, with a fakey butter flavor. And Popeye's has Nichole's subjective double-strike against it in serving only Pepsi products, and Diet Pepsi as the only diet choice.

Our leftovers were decent. A small chicken biscuit was - a chicken strip on a biscuit, but was good and cheap. The red beans were very soupy, but had a rich smokiness; the rice stayed fluffy; and it all ended up in tortillas for dinner and was pretty good that way.

For what it is, cheap, fast fried chicken, Popeye's is better than KFC any day. It might even be possible to  find an "A" meal here from the various permutations of sides. One wag-cum-culinary-adventurer we know once tossed out the idea of making stock from a KFC chicken frame, a cringeworthy experiment indeed. While we still wouldn't do that with bones from Popeye's, we might could see ourselves trying their recipe for green bean casserole.

As an aside - we kind of liked going to Popeyes, yet didn't really miss KFC, which is not on the Eats list. Sometimes we wonder what indeed qualifies a place to make the cut, e.g. Perkins - Yes, Denny's - No, Popeye's - Yes, KFC - no, Taco John's - Yes, Taco Bell - no. Again, we don't really see the need to expand the List to include everything, especially because people need no help in finding Burger King. But it does make us think... far too much, we're sure.

Comments

[Kyle]

I've had some passionate discussions on the merits of Popeye's with a friend on Twitter, and she swears by the mashed potatoes and gravy. It purports to be a proper giblet gravy, and it was pretty decent for drive-thru gravy.

Less success to be had with the catfish, but the shrimp sandwich approximated a po'boy quite well. Plus, it was huge.

[Michele]

Mmmm, I love popeyes! Happy delurking day!

[Jeff]

I went to the one near the east side Woodman's before it closed and came away indredibly underwhelmed. Their chicken and biscuits were the driest examples of either that I've ever had - the biscuit was especially tasteless and wierdly coated in salt/grease. Maybe the Fitchburg location is better

[Jim]

I went to the one in Fitchburg a couple years ago, and was severely disappointed. Maybe I went on a bad day, but there was absolutely nothing there which begged me to return.

[Paula]

I only went to the Fitchburg Popeye's once and it dodn't come close to the now-closed East side one. In fact, I remember Fitchburg's being overly greasy, but this was years ago. I LOVE Popeye's but have never strayed from my order...dark meat (don't care if it's mild or spicy), red beans n rice, and slaw.