Stop here for greasy chicken! (Kentucky Fried Chicken (KFC))

Member Name: i_am_joy

Product:	Kentucky Fried Chicken (KFC)
Date:	30/06/09 (89 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Fairly tasty, plenty of meal options to suit most people, clean restaurants

Disadvantages: 'Empty' calories, very greasy food

Personally I think KFC is the Marmite of the branched fast food restaurants, people either love the food or hate it with very rarely someone coming along who can take or leave it. I am that person. My mouth doesn't water at the aroma of walking past a KFC, but neither do I wrinkle my nose in disgust as I do when I come across the scent of greasy McDonalds cooking in the high street.

KFC stands for Kentucky Fried Chicken (as if you didn't know), and their menu selection is rather limited with chicken being the name of the game as the name of the outlet would suggest. I don't usually bother with the restaurant if I'm honest as although I do quite enjoy some of their food I do find it to be very empty nutritionally, providing me with a high calorie and fat content but invariably leaving me feeling as though I haven't eaten within an hour of having a meal from KFC.

This weekend we were driving to Llandudno and ended up stopping for lunch at a motorway service station where the only food outlet we could all agree on was KFC; the other options being Burger King (which my granddaughters' don't like), a coffee shop which served food (which my son in law refused to set foot in as it looked 'too poncey') and a proper restaurant which even I thought was 'too poncey' and extremely expensive! So KFC it was.

When choosing your food you'll quickly see that KFC has a large selection of different meals available from a range of chicken burgers to the original pieces of greasy but tasty chicken legs and drumsticks. I usually opt for a chicken fillet burger as personally I find the chicken pieces are never cooked well enough and are often a little pink in the middle. You can, of course, choose any of the menu options as a stand alone meal component but really you are better financially to weigh up all the different meal combinations to see which one represents the best value for your money.

On Friday I had a Fillet Tower Burger, fries and a cup of Pepsi which cost around £5 as a meal deal. This meal I find is just right for myself as although KFC are rather stingier with the chips than other fast food restaurants the burger is very large and filling (for a while!). The chicken fillet used on the burger is chunky and far better cooked than the individual chicken portions you can buy, it is coated in the famous secret KFC recipe batter and isn't as greasy as the rest of the chicken available. Also on my burger was a round flat hash brown which was delicious and fresh crunchy lettuce as well as a generous squirt of a smoky BBQ sauce which rounded the flavours of the burger off beautifully.

Of course, KFC still offer the bucket meals that have been available for years. My daughter, son in law and three granddaughters' shared a £9.99 bucket which consisted of ten pieces of chicken and four packets of chips. This makes dining as a family in KFC much more cost effective than each of you choosing your own individual meal and it fed the five of them nicely with nothing at all being wasted. My son in law's mum isn't fond of plain chicken so chose a wickedly spicy Zinger meal which comprised two spicy chicken strips wrapped in a tortilla with salad, this came with chips and a cold drink as is the norm with KFC meals.

I find the restaurants themselves are always clean and the staff have always been friendly and helpful whenever I've visited. The food is processed almost conveyor belt style with one staff member taking the order, another packaging the chips and yet another getting the chicken ready before it's all passed to the original member of staff I saw to put it all in bags and/or buckets. Most KFC's will have a sit down area which is usually well maintained and comfortable, I found the one I went into on Friday to be spotlessly clean with tables cleared and wiped down by dedicated members of staff who were wandering around the restaurant waiting for people to finish their food.

It's middle of the road for me, it really is. I've never had the urge to hunt down a KFC and their food is something I very rarely think of apart from the odd times when I'm passing a restaurant and that's all there is to eat, and for me this boils down to once or perhaps twice a year so who cares about a zillion grams of fat per chicken portion?

Summary: It's not often I fancy a KFC but when I do I'll have a burger rather than a piece of pink chicken!