Texas Chicken Massacre

It says a lot about myself that I'm about to write about fast food again, but it does tend to play a significant role in Abu Dhabi life. The line for McDonalds is always long and packed with Arabs, every gigantic AD block has some type of cheap carryout option, and you often have to go to extra trouble to get any meal without french fries. Some of the Americans seem to hate and/or shake their head at these facts, but I'm obviously tickled pink by it.

Today's fast food excursion was at a place a gigantic AD half-block away called Texas Chicken. This experience brought me more big smiles than expected.

I have no idea if I visited the only Texas Chicken in the world, or if it's a chain based out of Russia or Montana or even Texas (putting "Texas" in the name of things in Texas is just smart business). I also had no concept of a style of fried chicken associated with Texas, but I was enticed by the idea of this place in the Middle East.

There was nothing special about the building itself - it sat in the middle of a block between two cheaper-looking Arab restaurant. And although it isn't the Short Pump Arby's, the space inhabited by Texas Chicken was new and tile-y and smelled fine and it had a TV. It wasn't decrepit, like most Church's Chickens I patronized in Alabama.

Upon entering, the first thing that made me internally giggle was two Texas Chicken employees eating contentedly in the middle of a section that looked like about 25 customers had been beamed elsewhere, or disintegrated. No sign of them, but their trays and trash were everywhere. This is one thing I'm starting to get annoyed with - that a lot of people in Abu Dhabi feel no responsibility to ever clean up after themselves, looking at it is the low laborer's job. But with so much trash everywhere, and these two employees just silently eating away, I was pretty amused, imagining opening-scene-from-Children In The Corn-like scenarios for what caused The Texas Chicken Massacre. Of course it was the type of thing that would cause 60% of male Americans and 98.5% of female Americans to turn around and never come back to Texas Chicken.

But I stayed, which allowed me to see two menu items that cranked up my giddiness level to a 9.2. The most eye-catching option was The Mexicana, which was basically a chicken sandwich with lettuce and the entire ingredients of Taco Bell's Nachos Supreme (minus the "taco meat filling") on top of it. Yes, that includes the nacho chips themselves. This was something that I definitely would have (and will, at some point) ordered. It has moved up above the Hardees Chili Lava Burger on my "new fast food to try" list. But I forgot my camera, and I definitely want a picture when I take the plunge.

While I was standing there waiting for my now-boring-seeming order of a 4-piece fried chicken, I noticed a less conspicuous but potentially more sinister sandwich option. This one was called the purple supreme, and what its picture revealed was most likely a chicken sandwich with lettuce, onions and purple on it. What is the purple, I wondered? Is it grapes? Is it jam or jelly? Did they stick pine sap and two of Grimace's toes in a blender, and spread that on the sandwich? None of the options sounded enticing edible. In fact it now tops my list for least enticing fast food in a promotional picture, knocking Krystals out of a spot held since Mardi Gras 2001.

So next time I go to Texas Chicken, which will likely be soon, I will bring my camera, I will order The Mexicana, I will take a picture of it and I will eat it. Then when I'm finished, I will order a Purple Supreme, I will take a picture of it and I will most likely not eat it.

Postscript: After writing this, I went ahead and looked up some Texas Chicken details. It seems as if it was closely related to Church's at one point, but now only exists internationally? The Mexicana is available in other places like Singapore, but the Purple Supreme seems to be unique to the UAE.