Honey’s Kettle Fried Chicken - Culver City, CA

Slave girl heard I was interested in Honey's Kettle Fried Chicken and got a Groupon deal for me to try. We went on a Friday during lunch time and was able to find street parking a block from the restaurant, not too bad.

The restaurant was counter service with a huge lunch crowd around 1:30pm. I couldn't imagine the line if we came around 12... The wait was long even after we ordered the food, but thankfully the total wait time wasn't as long like that famous fried chicken joint in Chinatown.

There were plenty of things on the menu from fried chicken to fish n chips. We settled for 8 pieces chicken, an order each of fries, coleslaw, biscuit, and sweet potato pie. Yelp check in also got us a free scoop of ice cream with pie purchase.

Since it had honey in the restaurant name, they had warm honey available for dipping. I didn't think honey would go well with chicken but what the hell... Hot sauce was also available but the container was empty everytime I tried to get some.

Our table was filthy and filled with leftover honey and hot sauce from other customers. That was ok because it was counter service and I didn't expect them to clean it for me. I went to the counter and asked for napkins so I could clean it myself. The guy behind the counter told me he would get someone to wipe it for us. He called out for someone to wipe and someone answered him. We waited and waited, our food was called and no one ever came to wipe the table. We ended up going to the restroom and grabbed the napkins there to wipe the table while setting our food on the chair. I could have done it already if they just gave me the napkins... If you can't deliver a service, don't promise one. That's all.

The chicken was fried well and skin was crunchy. The chicken meat had no flavor once you past the skin. It felt like I was just there for the batter. I tried to pair honey with the chicken and as expected, the honey masked everything. The chicken wasn't bad but definitely not something worth the drive if you don't live close by.

You want some chicken with that fries?! >.<

The slaw was average, not bad but not amazing. The fries was horrible. It was not seasoned and needed a little more time in the fryer. The biscuit though, oh my it was really good. They even sell the biscuit mixture at the restaurant. With a little bit of honey, that biscuit was the best of our meal.

 

Biscuit mixture for sale

The sweet potato pie was small and there was no ice cream! I understand maybe not everyone wanted to eat dessert first, but I was never told to go back for the ice cream. That created a confusion when I tried to get the ice cream later because the original guy wasn't there and the other guy was telling me I need to purchase it. Luckily, the original guy showed up and made sure everything was cool. They really needed a better system for that. The pie on the other hand was good and tasty, just really small.

Ice cream served on a piece of paper in the paper tray

Overall experience was not great. They may have used the best chicken on Earth, but sadly I couldn't taste the difference. Average food with premium price, I don't believe I would go back again.