Broke-Ass Craving: Chicken Fingers at Stoned Crow

Amidst the stress of paying NYC rent, trying to afford the train, cable, the phone bill and assorted other expenditures it’s nice to be able to satisfy a food craving for only a couple of dollars.  We’ve covered pizza, tacos, burgers, falafel and booze on this site but I wanted to take a moment to pay tribute to one of my very favorite cheap cravings of all time: the chicken finger.  The chicken finger can be prepared generally two ways: either battered and frie (gross) or flattened, breaded and THEN fried. This is awesome.  Sometimes I’ll be stoned at a diner and forget to ask how they’re prepared and they come and they’re all round and oily and weird and frankly it just makes me sick.  When they’re done right though?   He-vann. Like He-vann Urkelle.  I’ve found a few tried and true spots around town that know how to get it done, but none have surpassed the price, quality and quantity of the chicken fingers at The Stoned Crow.  You know the place, that little downstairs bar on Washington Street with the very good jukebox, the low ceilings and where the girls room wall is plastered with ’90’s-era Rolling Stone pictorial spreads of such then-hearthrob luminaries as Ben Affleck, Matt Damon, Mark Wahlberg, Casey Affleck (Ha!) and Eddie Vedder.  So basically a bunch of morons from Boston and Eddie Vedder. And DiCaprio, duh.  But the chicken fingers, oh, the chicken fingers!  So delicious, so golden, so perfectly crisp and brown and juicy.  And with that super-ghetto barbecue sauce? Well I don’t think my drunk self likes anything more.

I recently watched Food, Inc.–well, about ten minutes of it–but that’s all it took to convince me that I’m no longer comfortable eating meat that may come from a factory farm. That means that I will only consume meat from animals raised and killed humanely. Except for maybe when I’m hammered sometimes I’ll get the chicken fingers at The Stoned Crow.  Sorry, maturity; they so delicious!

Stoned Crow
85 Washington Place
New York, NY 10011-9158
(212) 677-4022