Just why am I writing a blog about bad fried chicken? Many people on CAG know that I love chicken fingers (or some sort of fried chicken). It's the one food I'm usually eager to try at many different restaurants because usually it tastes good. Unfortunately under a few conditions, I had bad chicken.

I heard some say that Church's had the best fried chicken out there. There are none in Maryland and none near where I lived in Indiana. My sister told me there was a location in a ghetto area of Indianapolis, but she never went there because of the area. Regardless, one day I check out Church's Chicken website and though those chicken tenders looked great. I found out there was one in Fort Belvoir(sp), VA (around a one hour drive). When driving there on a Sunday, I could not find the place. Come to find out, it was within a military base. I was so disappointed so I went to Popeyes Chicken instead in Springfield, VA to get my chicken fix. I was finally going to drive passed Richmond, VA on my way to Hampton Roads VA region over a week ago, so I decided to stop by Church's. I ordered my food there with fries. The location in Richmond was a bit freaky since it was in a not so good area w/ cameras all over the restaurant. The people who walked in there were shady too. My food cost me over $7, but didn't mind since I figured I'd have some of the best tasting chicken ever. So I parked in Food Lion's parking lot to eat my chicken. The chicken tasted absolutely HORRIBLE. It lacked any crunchy feel to it. Tasted very moist, but the breaded stuff tasted nasty (tasted like straight butter and had no good flavor). I tried their french fries which were all right, but tasted like fries I got on my college campus (or can cook at home easily). My Sprite was nothing special. Biggest waste of $7+ on food ever. I can't believe I went through all that trouble to try that chicken. Afterwards I was craving KFC or Popeyes because it tasted so much better.

At first I thought maybe I just ate at a bad Church's location, but I had a few others tell me their chicken was really bad. I ended up stopping at a Kroger picking up plain white cupcakes and plain white bread to get that terrible taste out of my mouth.

This isn't my only bad experience with chicken. The worst chicken I ever had came from Penguin Point, back when I was a kid, but most every location shut down anyway. McDonald's Chicken Selects don't tastes too great IMO. Chicken fingers at my work's cafeteria are very dry. I felt Olive Garden's chicken fingers were bad, but that was many years ago when I last had them (back when I was a kid). One restaurant in Biloxi, MS (I don't remember the name) had very plain tasting chicken fingers.

Despite a few of these incidents, most restaurants have good chicken. I just can't believe I went through all that trouble to try Church's Chicken and ended up hating it. Whoever said Church's was better than KFC in one of my blogs a while ago, I FULLY disagree.