Are you old enough to have ever had fried chicken before the advent of fast food fried chicken? Perhaps you’ve forgotten how the real McCoy tastes. Fuel’s Fried Chicken Fridays are back! Take the opportunity to reacquaint yourself with, or discover, the flavour of locally-raised, non-hybridized, slow-growth chicken without hormones or antibiotics.
Executive Chef Robert Belcham chose free-run, Polderside Redbro chicken raised at a Chilliwack farm by Virginia and Jens-Hugo Jacobsen. The chicken is a European variety commonly grown for Label Rouge certification. Barn raised, they receive all vegetable-grain feed plus sunflower seeds which strengthen their immune system without antibiotics. “Virginia and Jens raise chicken with love in their hearts, for us and for the chickens. The final product tastes like chicken is supposed to taste, like the chickens my grandfather raised on his farm” says Belcham.
The chicken is marinated and cooked sous vide in buttermilk. Made to order, it’s then coated in seasoned flour and deep-fried. Each week features a different garnish, depending on what is fresh, in season, or on the kitchen’s hot list. Last week, braised Savoy cabbage, baked jalapeño biscuits, and ‘AJ’s’ gravy accompanied the chicken. The plate also comes with a choice of draught R&B Bohemian Lager or Red Devil Pale Ale for $19.50. With this particular combination, I found the lager the better pairing of the two, although someone with less of a tolerance for chilis might have found the bitterness of the pale ale more appropriate.
I’m a sucker for dessert. So after finishing lunch, I decided to turn this into a Fried Food Friday and ordered the Tahitian Vanilla Doughnuts with pumpkin ice cream and house made root beer. The fried, sugar-coated dough balls were bready and light-tasting. The real star, however, was the root beer float. A layer of vanilla gelatine lined the bottom of a glass. Root beer — meant to be more of a foam than actual soft drink — was then poured over the gelatine and a scoop of pumpkin ice cream added. The root beer was wonderfully intense, made from a mixture of sasparilla, juniper, sassafras, liquorice, and winter green charged with CO2. With such bold flavours, the pumpkin was more of a quiet complement than palate partner — a very satisfying end to the meal.
Fuel Fried Chicken Fridays
12:00 – 2:00 pm, from February 27 until the end of the summer
Fuel Restaurant
1944 West 4th Avenue, Vancouver
Tel: (604) 288-7905
www.fuelrestaurant.ca
~ RG
{ 5 comments… read them below or add one }
“The final product tastes like chicken is supposed to taste, like the chickens my grandfather raised on his farm” says Belcham, but I’m guessing his grandfather’s chickens weren’t born in France and shipped by jet to Canada, as the Redbro chickens from Polderside are:
http://www.vanmag.com/Restaurants/ProducerSupplier_of_the_Year_Polderside_Farms
Just one point to contend with here. Polderside’s Redbro chickens are born in France and flown to Canada, then raised locally. I think that makes them technically not local.
I wonder what the carbon cost is of animals flown in from another continent?
Thanks for the additional information, meh & Mike. I have corrected the ‘local’ reference.
Your remarks also raise some issues that I think need wider public discussion. If the Jacobsens don’t trust the North American genetic stock, what will happen when the nexus of climate change and peak oil will make importing prohibitively expensive?
When the intensive use of petroleum products in large-scale agriculture (fertilizers, pesticides, machinery) is also no longer possible, will we be sufficiently prepared to make a broad transition to low-carbon farming or will there be a collapse?
I believe we will be going back to the farming practices of Robert Belcham’s grandfather and of the Jacobsens, only we will be a lot more dependent on our domestic stock. Therefore, we should take better care of it.
Everything takes time to build.
Farming is very heavy in front-end costs, i.e. quota, barn, equipment, land costs. Our birds are heritage cross birds, as the original genetics are held in Europe, because of their foresight, somewhat like the Norwegians have started a plant gene bank of the world’s plants….a “just in case”.
We have plans to have our own breeding flock in order to reduce operating costs. However, one chicken can lay 175 eggs in her lifetime. You figure our how many chicks a day that is to grow with even 1000 birds……..so “one step at a time”…..but the plans are being formulated. Right now this is the best way to bring BC’ers an alternative taste….glad you are loving it so much!!! This is how a chicken used to taste!!!
But what really gives them the zest is Robert and staff, with their huge talents in food preparation.
Eat lots and eat well!!
Thanks for filling us in on your plans, Virginia. You also raise an excellent point. We should be building a gene bank, just in case — yet another reason why we should be supporting our local farmers.
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