You Have to Know to Know

I cover a lot of big franchises on the site, largely because those are the places most readers are going to be able to visit themselves. I’m in one location on the globe but most people aren’t anywhere near me, so if I want a review to be relevant I figure covering larger chains is, by and large, the right thing to do. With that said, sometimes I like to get a bit of the local experience, and even if I don’t think others will easily be able to get over where I’m eating at, there’s still value in occasionally reviewing something smaller, something local, just so we can compare and contrast these eating experiences against those from the big boys.

Kenney’s is a chicken and burger joint in Lexington, Virginia. It’s the kind of local hot spot that you have to know exists to even be able to find it. One of those “if you know, you know” joints. It’s tucked away on a back street to a side street, up on a hill that comes just far enough down the road that you already think you’ve made a wrong turn. There’s no sign on the main boulevard, no hint that it’s there for you to find. You have to know it’s there to even be able to get to it. A hidden treasure, if you will.

The restaurant is primarily known for its chicken, even if that’s only a small segment of its menu. That’s because the chicken is actually pretty great. While you could go there for anything else they serve – burgers, fries, onion rings, shakes, barbeque pork, and more – chicken is what everyone talks about. The name might be “Kenney’s” but when you say it you automatically fill it in as “Kenney’s Chicken”. It’s their centerpiece, the thing they’re best at and best known for, and it’s why the locals keep going back time and again.

I recently visited the Lexington location a couple of times and figured I’d share my thoughts on what I sampled, picking out the good and the bad from their selection of sampled items. Even now I’ve barely scratched everything they have on the menu, and I could go back several more times before I finally tried it all. I’m just not sure if my arteries would be happy with me if I did that:

Fried Chicken

Naturally we start with their fried chicken. It comes in a selection of sizes, from the simple snack pack of two pieces, two small sides, all the way up to a monster picnic pack of 16 pieces, two large sides, and a dozen biscuits. It’s about what you’d expect from any chicken joint in composition, similar to KFC or Popeyes. What is different is the quality. Kenney’s chicken is pretty good, tasty, salty, and well cooked, just the way you want good Southern fried chicken.

The chicken is probably the best part of these meals as the sides aren’t anything really special. The potato salad is fine, although not as well seasoned as I’d like. The mashed potatoes are basic, served with a simple chicken gravy that gets the job done but doesn’t really beat potatoes at other chicken joints. And the green beans are, well, canned green beans. There’s no flair here. You come for the chicken, and it’s the star of the show.

Well, okay, their biscuits are pretty decent, too. They’re fried, drop biscuits, full of grease. They aren’t super flavorful, unlike the chicken, but the point is to serve the biscuits with honey, creating a lovely dip-and-eat combination. Or, at least, you would if their honey were good. I’m picky about my honey, preferring wildflower honey over basic, generic, Kraft stuff, and the honey at Kenney’s is too basic. I take the biscuits home and eat them with my preferred honey, and then the combo works. I just wouldn’t eat them at the restaurant.

I will note that while I love fried chicken, and I think what Kenney’s serves is pretty darn good, it’s not perfect. The chicken is flavorful, and the skin is often very crispy, but it’s not very crunchy or craggly. I’d guess they do a single dredge of the wet chicken pieces through the dry mix before cooking, and that works to get a simple fry on them. As someone that makes my own fried chicken, though, and someone that can appreciate a really craggly chicken (the kind of Popeyes can make when their staff is really on it), Kenney’s doesn’t quite hit that crunchy high mark. It’s good, but not exceptional.

Burgers

At the suggestion of a friend I more recently got a burger from Kenney’s along with my chicken order (getting food for my wife and I to share). Their recommendation was, specifically, the S.M.O: sauce, mustard, onions. This is Kenney’s two ounce patty, cooked on the griddle and then dipped in their special sauce (some burger sauce combo that sits between ketchup and thousand island) topped with extra mustard and onions. And, yeah, it’s pretty good.

On the plus side, the burger was well cooked, well done but still juicy. It was a nice, snack sized burger done well and priced reasonably at just a little over two bucks. I could easily see getting a few of their cheap, flavorful burgers in a sack because this one was tasty, juicy, easy to eat, and it did leave me craving another. And when you consider that this was homemade, and cheaper than what McDonald’s wants for a cheese burger, I’d call that a winner.

With that said, the burger also wasn’t perfect. Specifically it has maybe a touch too much sauce. I liked the special sauce, but I think I’d like it better if the sauce were just thickly applied to one side of the bun instead of being all over the burger itself. It was very tasty for much of what I ate, but by the last couple of bites I won’t deny I was a bit done with the sweet tang of the sauce. It started to feel a bit thick in my mouth.

Sides

Lastly, there were a couple of side options I tried, their onion rings and their corn dog bites, and these were just not as good. Don’t get me wrong, they were functionally well made, each with a decent batter on them, good crispness, and the expected composition. But as far as flavor was concerned, that was where they both fell off and that’s because, for both items, they were incredibly bland.

I could go either way on the onion rings because I can see how a lighter flavored onion ring might be perfect for some people. The onion wasn’t very powerful in the ring, and the batter was light and crunchy. But I do like more flavor, more salt, on my onion rings and the batter on these lacked that. The corn dog bites, by comparison, were decently made little hush puppies with tiny dogs in the middle. I was just surprised they were bland, not because of the batter but because the dogs themselves lacked a ton of flavor. You expect dogs to be salty and these just weren’t.

My wife suggested that these were likely meant for dipping, which I could see. Except there’s no suggested dipping sauce for these items, and all I could think to put on them was ketchup. Corn dogs especially, in my opinion, need honey mustard. I eventually made some once I got my leftovers home and honey mustard did, indeed, kick them up. But since they don’t come with sauce, in my opinion they should be able to stand on their own and these simply don’t.

Final Thoughts

That leaves Kenney’s, for me, as something of a mixed bag. I like their chicken, I really like their burgers, but I think all their sides are pretty boring. I’d have to a la carte what I want from them and be very choosy about what I specifically get. For very specific items, Kenney’s is great. As a whole experience, though, their menu is lacking just a little something to really sing, at least in my book.