From East to West … we thought we’d give the western fried chicken a go to see how it stacked up against its Eastern competitor Hill Country Chicken has a pretty simple menu: Fried Chicken, Fresh-Cut Fries and Homemade Pies. It was clearly very popular if the queues and crowds inside were any indication.

Your fried chicken choices are between Hill Country Classic or Mama Els’ Recipe (basically skinless and batterless – where’s the fun in that! – but with special seasonings) and then you can get the breast, thigh, drum or wing plus a variety of sides including the fresh-cut fries and cheesy mash etc. Sadly I could see that the chicken was not fried made to order …

We decided to do a thigh and drum in one each of the Classic and Mama Els’ Recipe. The chicken for sure was juicy (even if not freshly fried up) however I wasn’t too excited about the flavour in either of the two options – neither really came out and grabbed me and I had to make quite copious use of the Honey Mustard dipping sauce we’d ordered to go with it. Perhaps there wasn’t enough seasoning or perhaps I’d been spoiled by the Korean fried chicken experience …

The staff at Hill Country Chicken are super friendly and I quite liked the atmosphere of the venue. I liked how it was bright and cheery and you definitely can’t hate a place that offers homemade pies which include flavour such as Salted Margarita, Coconut Cream, and Cowboy (with an option to make it a shake too!) 😉

Still, I probably wouldn’t go out of my way to go there again but if I’m in the area I wouldn’t say no.