One of the last places I ever thought I’d run into legendary California chef Bradley Ogden was a fast-casual fried chicken joint in Houston. It certainly never occurred to me that such a place would be his. Yet so it went over lunch today at Funky Chicken, the two-day-old eatery Ogden has opened here with his chef-son Bryan and their business partners. For those of us brought up on Colonel Sanders’ secret recipe of 11 herbs and spices, and especially for those of us raised in New Orleans on Popeyes, Funky is a chicken of a different color.
Funky Chicken features roast chicken as well as fried. And even the fried is, almost miraculously, gluten-free, using some kind of non-flour where the flour in the batter should be. Non-wheat flour, that is. Yet even more than that, and even more than the dozen sustainable touches in the restaurant and the plates and bowls food is served in, the single most “California” thing about Funky Chicken is the quality of ingredients. Fast-casual food has almost no right to be seasonal or farm-to-table, but that’s exactly what a lot of the food here is.
There is a generous supply of sides, ranging from traditional potato salad and cole slaw to a couple of vegetarian specialties made with quinoa and Israeli couscous, plus healthy things like kale. But just when you think Grandma would feel like a stranger in a strange land at Funky Chicken, out comes what might be the best made-from-scratch chicken pot pie I’ve ever tasted. There’s a layer of biscuit at the bottom soaking up goodness and another on top that’s crisp and golden brown, with a fresh-tasting stew of white and dark meat, carrots and even broccoli (green peas being out of season, Ogden explains) in the middle.
There are two amazing desserts - one being (a definite theme here) a homemade-tasting cookie that today featured an odd-sounding but incredible combination of chocolate chips, crumbled Heath bar, marshmallows and cracked pretzel sticks. The other sweet finale is even better, a spin on white chocolate bread pudding that’s more about the custard than the bread. Chef Ogden says he’s been doing nothing but tasting in the kitchen the past few days, so he’s happy to help me polish off the chicken pot pie followed by the bread pudding like it’s a real meal at a table. After decades in some of the finest and fanciest kitchens in San Francisco and beyond, the guy clearly knows his way around a fried chicken joint.
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