JJ Fish
I passed by this place three times. Including the one time I stopped in to check if they sold Gizzards. Each time I passed by I was on my way to lunch downtown so I couldn’t stop in and grab some Gizzards.
Finally after another terrible job interview (note: This is becoming routine) I had the chance of being downtown, hungry, and within a 15 minute walk of JJ Fish. Of course it was 10am and I didn’t know they would even be open but that won’t stop a Gizzard Quest. I must know and I must know NOW!
I knew exactly where to go. Walk down Michigan Ave. Pass Millennium Park (they aren’t hiring me). Make a right onto Adams at the Art Institute of Chicago (probably want to go on a free thursday night). It’ll be on the right at some point. Next to G&G Market or something like that.
Gizzards only came as a small or large meal. I got the small meal for 5.69 plus Tax. It ended up being a lot larger than I thought and was pleasantly surprised at how many gizzards came in the small meal. Along with your regularly fried gizzards there was also a bunch of fries, a very tiny bowl of coleslaw and under the gizzards were two pieces of white bread.
Apparently this white bread thing is a big deal here in Chicago because I hear that Harold’s Chicken Shack also gives you white bread underneath your fried chicken.
The Gizzards were the first of the day I assume since there were only three people there before me and they all go chicken tenders or Fish. My gizzards were well fried and adequately cooked. The small ones were nicely tender and the large ones just tender enough to eat well. I would say these what the average gizzards should be. I don’t want to give JJ Fish above average ranking just because it is still very early in the Gizzard Quest.
Flying Chicken
Through an unimpressive search for Gizzards on the internet I stumbled across a columbian restaurant serving not fried gizzards but Consume, a chicken soup with gizzards. The selling point was that it’s very close to Wrigleyville. After an unsuccessful job interview I took a short bus trip over to the Flying Chicken.
The Flying Chicken lies in an unassuming part of Lakeview. Not Wrigleyville but not quite Roscoe Village either. If I were more familiar with the area there’s probably an actual name for the neighborhood. My unfamiliarity with the neighborhood drove my hunger for this particular place.
As I stumbled upon the Flying Chicken there is a yellowish glow to the place with only two large men chatting and devouring large plates of food. This could either be very good or very bad. I reckon I’m just past the lunch rush. it’s about 2 pm, but I wonder if this is more of a dinner place that happens to be open for lunch. The Menu is full of large dinners and they don’t have a specific lunch menu or even many specials.
I walk to a counter in the back with a girl and a cash register. IF this isn’t the place to order from then what else could it be? I ask for gizzards, going blank on the fact that they only have consume. She of course lets me know they don’t have gizzards separate but I can get them in Consume. “One TO GO!” After I try to joke with her and see if the cook can fry me up a batch of gizzards I order one Consume, sit down and look over the menu. A moment later I order a Naranja Posobon (orange soda) to drink while I wait.
Just a few moments after I finish the soda the consume is ready. She hands me a brown paper bag with a styrofoam bowl shaped object in it with the gizzards I want so badly. I hand her the money she wants so badly . I walk out with a giddiness for the amazing taste to come. But I must wait the bus trip back and the short walk in and the oh so pleasant opening of the Styrofoam bowl.
Gizzards, you see, shouldn’t be very tough as I have said before. They should be somewhat tough but not to the point of chewing forever. That means they need to be cooked well. Even if just fried, there’s a technique to it. These gizzards have been boiled which has also been a favorite pastime of mine. They also have been stewed in a broth of chicken and columbian flavors. I’ll have a party going on in my mouth as they will be juicy and oh so…
About 3 blocks away from the Flying Chicken my mother calls me. I transfer the paper bag to my left hand and begin talking with my mother. A minute later I feel something falling. I look down and there is the white styrofoam coming out of the paper bag. For all intents and purposes time slowed down. Time wanted me to have this Consume. Something else didn’t want me to. Time gave me just enough, well, time to grab the bowl as it lay precariously halfway out of the torn paper bag. I was overzealous. My fingers went straight through the brittle styrofoam. Soup all over my hand. I whip my hand away from the boiling water. But what’s this I only got the top? Save what I can! Time be damned! You’ve helped enough. I had two, count them two, chances to save the soup. The 2nd time went exactly like the first but this time the gizzards went… yes… flying.
I wasn’t supposed to have gizzards that day my friends. I was being greedy. This whole adventure came to a grinding halt. No gizzards for you! at least for today! The gizzards lay on the ground looking oh so delicious, exactly as I thought they would. They glistened in the sun with that broth covering their skin. With such high expectations and such terrible occurrences I left the gizzards and chicken scraps for the birds and just went home. I didn’t want to go through the pain of losing them again. There are other fish in the sea, other gizzards to eat.
I’ve taken a step back since that day. But as I think of it more and more I shouldn’t be sitting home on the couch dreaming of the holy gizzard. I should go back out there and shove those gizzards down my gullet. Why else am I on this earth? Since that day I haven’t had a gizzard but miraculously when I said that gizzards should come to me, they have. I was walking downtown and I saw JJ Fish, a downtown fried foods place. Taking a look inside concluded they did in fact have gizzards. That’s my next adventure.
The Great Gizzard Quest begins. A few minutes after an interview for a freelance tech job I turned my car into the parking lot of a seemingly normal strip mall. As I had been briefed a few minutes before by the interviewer, I would be able to find Gizzards at the aforementioned Brown’s. It was your typical fast southern style food with all the greasy fatty fried goods along with the carbomatics of mac and cheese and potatoes and other good to look at bad for your health sides. This place was just like Grandy’s in the south. It seemed promising when there was nobody in the place at 2pm in the afternoon (a sure sign that I should have kept on trucking). But my quest for the best Gizzards Chicago offers blew the wind in my favor and I had a grin on while I asked for 1/2 a pound of Gizzards and a drink to go along with them.
Thank goodness I got the drink because these were the saltiest hardest Gizzards I had had since Grandy’s a few months back in Gainesville.
A fried gizzard should have enough breading to just coat a little bit of the flesh but not so much and so hard as to create a large pocket of air between the crunchy over salted crap batter and the gizzard itself. There was so much batter that the gizzard wasn’t even cooked right. It was cooked, don’t get me wrong, I wasn’t eating raw gizzard but it was tougher than it should be and they didn’t do a good job at all of cleaning the gizzards off. I got one which had a very tough almost inedible casing. Gizzards can be tough little morsels of chickenish goodness but they shouldn’t be as hard to chew up as gum. and they definitely shouldn’t have impossible to chew centers of cartilage. I kept having to spit out parts that were in fact inedible. I know it sounds gross. Don’t go to Brown’s Chicken and Pasta for Gizzards.
