​I owe this project to the allure of a television commercial.  Earlier this year, KFC began running commercials touting its fried chicken sandwiches with images that looked enticing, as I was surprised to admit, and with the assertion that burger joints weren’t the places to get these, one should go to a fried chicken franchise, KFC, of course.  I was actually intrigued.
 
KFC didn’t start the trend, and once a craze, for sandwiches made with chicken breasts, breaded and deep-fried and served on hamburger buns with mayonnaise and pickles, with the option for a cayenne pepper-spiced version.  With the inspiration and competition from Chick-fil-A, in the summer of 2019 Popeye’s introduced its chicken sandwich, one spicy and one not, that caused a sensation, to the surprise of the company, along with occasional violence in the long queues at its restaurants.  The considerable success spawned versions at other restaurants across the country, fast-food spots and otherwise.  This has certainly been popular, even helping cause shortage of the chicken meat.  Whataburger now has on its website home page the warning: “Due to demand, some chicken items may not be available at this time.”
 
The spicy version was the one that resonated me.  If not quite enough to venture to a Popeye’s, or later anywhere, to check it out until nearly the summer of this year.  I avoided the hype back then.  I try not to eat much in the way of fast food.  And chicken breasts are among the very dullest of proteins.  It was tough for me to get excited about something that was centered around this. As Nashville-inspired hot chicken has spread across the country in recent years, I became more interested in the sandwich versions.
 
Unlike my quest to try every margherita pizza in Houston, for which I had some hopes for widespread quality – for which there is definitely not here, unfortunately – I knew that the bar would not be too high concerning spicy chicken sandwiches, which were conceived at fast food joints.  So, I didn’t expect a lot of disappointment.  Some indigestion, of course.
 
To note, the spicy chicken sandwich is a different animal – well, same animal – same cut of it, same breading and deep-frying and made with a spicy flavor, also, as the Buffalo chicken sandwich that’s been on some menus for a while, but different, as we all know.  Not that much different, but different enough for me.  And you, too.  Bleu cheese, with its strong-tasting difference, disqualifies a sandwich in a similar fashion, of course.
 
I really tried to try the chicken sandwiches at every place in Houston, within reason, of course.  I have to admit I missed the one from the (overly) wide-ranging menu at Woodshed in Levy Park.  The chicken fried steak I had there recently is certainly one of the worst versions in the area – and I have had about every one in town in another, possibly silly, still-ongoing artery-clogging line of investigation – so I didn’t place a lot of faith in its rendition of another deep-fried offering.  I didn’t sample the one at Jack the Box, either; Jack in the Box is really gross.
 
I tried the spicy chicken sandwiches at nearly twenty restaurants in Houston, fast-food and otherwise.  A couple of the places, Howdy Hot Chicken, a small chain from Sugar Land, and Mico’s Hot Chicken, use obviously industrially produced ultra-thick, Chernobyl Farms-style chicken breasts; too much of the very boring chicken breast and necessarily less of the fried breading per bite.  I did not enjoy these much at all.  What I found is that a thinner cut of chicken breast makes for a much tastier sandwich, one with a closer mix of the crunchy, more flavorful breading to meat.  The fast-food restaurants generally do a good job with this.  But, two drawbacks of the fast food spots are the quality of the bun, pretty much just the overly processed and ingredient-ed white bread stuff, and that the chicken might be dried out a bit; the meats aren’t cooked to order at these.  Other than that, the quality of the meat seems the same; it’s chicken breast, after all.  Whether fast-food or not, taken to go, with a fair amount of sauce and sometime some liquid-y cole slaw, these sandwiches don’t travel particularly well.
 
The best version that I found was from The Hay Merchant, which does a lot of things very well.  It’s $14 and comes with house-made potato chips.  After that was at KFC and Popeye’s, smaller in size, but $10 less, only $3.99, and these have drive-thrus.  These convenient cheapies out-performed most of the more ambitious restaurants.  Then came The Burger Joint, though it does not have a spicy version.  There are few others that are worth ordering, if not worth a detour: The Cookshack, Feges BBQ, Fuddruckers and even the oft-variable Whataburger.  If you feel the craving for a fried chicken sandwich, I recommend one of the above.  But, there is almost always better things on the menu.

The sandwich that begat the craze.

​On Fairview near Taft in the heart of Montrose, I recently drove past the quaint building that had housed Cooking Girl, the humble Sichuan restaurant that garnered local buzz, some national attention and begat the Pepper Twins restaurants, currently with five locations scattered around the Houston area.  This reminded me it had been too long since I had picked up food from Pepper Twins.  Several weeks, but too long.
 
So, the next day, I ordered lunch from the most local of the locations for me, the initial Pepper Twins on W. Gray, happy to see that the lunch specials were back available from the online ordering.  A terrific deal when avoiding a few of the missteps, with menu prices of just $9.99, you will get you a choice of almost ten entrées the comes with the requisite steamed white rice and a side of fried spring rolls or sliced cucumbers with garlic, sesame oil, and red oil.
 
I got the Pepper Twins Chicken – small chicken pieces sautéed with Sichuan peppercorns, fiery Thai chiles, strands of scallions, garlic, ginger, plentiful Sichuan peppercorns, and bits of green bell pepper – and a couple fried vegetable-filled spring rolls.  It was a excellent, as it had been before, almost incredibly so given the low price.  This dish is emblematic of what Pepper Twins does at its best: a preparation rooted in Sichuan that features typically spicy and often numbing flavors with recognizably high-quality proteins, fresh vegetables, evident skill in the kitchen, and a delicious result that can be an outstanding value.  Easy to notice with my order, the meats are much better and much more flavorful than at most area Chinese restaurants, in particular.  The chicken comes from Springer Mountain, no hormone and no antibiotics, and tastier thighs are used.  The beef is Certified Angus Beef. The pork is from the Berkshire breed. 
 
Seemingly more so than other cuisines, a meal enjoyed with others at most Chinese restaurants improves the experience, as most preparations are meant for sharing – the entrées are large – and several dishes can be sampled.  Dry-Fried Green Beans, Julienned potatoes sautéed with scallions, vinegar, and salt, Hot Diving Fish, Mongolian Beef, Ma Po Tofu, Fried Spicy Chicken Cubes, the Mountain City Hot Pot are the items that have nearly filled the tabletop when I’ve dined at Pepper Twins with my co-workers from China.  But, a meal is still usually very enjoyable when dining solo, as the other day, and during the pandemic.
 
Another benefit with Pepper Twins, again with most Chinese restaurants is that most dishes travel well, better than most places, and are usually delicious eaten at home. 
 
About the only drawback is that the restaurant like a couple of other places I like, The Breakfast Klub and Pinkerton’s, uses Menufy as its ordering software that tacks on a “Convenience Fee” of $1.50.  Maybe this is for the privilege of ordering from the restaurant.  This annoyingly ridiculous charge is a very small price to pay given the overall value and the quality.
 
Pepper Twins
Several locations
txpeppertwins.com

The aforementioned Pepper Twins Chicken