The power of suggestion works every time on me. In checking the menu at Butcher for a hot dog, I saw that their Saturday special was fried chicken with two sides, and before I knew it I was in the car heading to Butcher. That revelation may lead you to believe that perhaps I like fried chicken more than the average person, and you would be right.
Because it was Butcher, I had higher expectations than I might for some other place. So maybe disappointment was inevitable. There was nothing really wrong with the chicken. It was meaty and extra crunchy from the batter, but the gigantic breast had been cut into two pieces, and still, it was a lot of chicken. Give me smaller chickens, please. Each piece was sprinkled with pickled banana peppers, which is a touch I always like.
There were no substitutions of sides, so I had the watermelon salad. I have no use for watermelon salad, though there are a lot of them around. As I said on The Food Show recently, watermelon should be: first, really wet, and icy cold, not warm or pressed or any of the other contrivances I see with the simple fruit these days. This one was room temperature and loaded with mint. I love the flavor of mint, but it is a strong flavor that tends to eclipse anything it is near. So the delicate and refreshing taste of watermelon was completely obscured by mint. An annoying detail.
The other side was dirty rice, which I must have whenever I see it. If ever there was a place to find a nonpareil version of dirty rice, a Donald Link restaurant, and particularly this one, would be it. I was quite surprised at what a dud this dirty rice was. Don’t get me wrong; a pile of rice with meat flavor and some spices can never be bad, but I just expected a lot more from dirty rice in a Donald Link restaurant.
None of this was bad or uninteresting. It was just fine. And “fine” is not what I expect to find at a restaurant owned by such a celebrated chef.