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I Think Dirty Bird is Starting to Fly

Posted by Ed Levine, May 3, 2006 at 7:28 AM

Has anyone else been to Dirty Bird this week?

Dirty Bird's Allison Vines Rushing just sent me the following e-mail:

"Thanks for the email, we appreciate your respect and admiration. Opening restaurants is not always smooth in the very beginning, this is my third to open and they all have their initial downfalls. This time was certainly different. We hired a chef who was opening the restaurant, trained him down here in Louisiana, and he just couldn't get it together in the first few days, and subsequently walked out in the middle of the week.

I flew up to New York and spent this week there and Slade is coming on Wednesday to take over until the awards. I feel we have worked out the kinks, and am astonished at how serious New Yorkers are about fried chicken. Pleasantly surprised that they are passionate about it!

We have been of course going through a lot of turmoil down here in the New Orleans area, but our restaurant here after eight months is coming along the best we can expect given the circumstances. We are thrilled to be able to spend time in New York as we love it and love our customers that we had at Jack's.

Doing fast food in a very small space is a learning experience for us, the demand is so great, and there is not much space to meet it. But we have already figured out ways to accomodate so many customers and we look forward to when it is running like a well oiled machine.

As for the PR, that was not our idea, we never have gone that route before and it was certainly preemtive. We are young chefs and learning every day, and trying to do as much as we can as well as we can do it.

I feel confident that I made a lot of headway this week and Slade will continue on that track.

And we really hope you do give it another try and it is up to all of our standards."

I just came back from a return visit to Dirty Bird, and it looks like the Bird is starting to fly. As she wrote in her e-mail Allison Vines Rushing spent a couple of days in NY working on the food. Based on what I had today, her work has paid off. I thought I ordered a ten piece box, but what I got was ten chicken fingers, along with a quarter rotisseried chicken, a piece of corn bread and some roasted potatoes. The chicken fingers were crispy, greaseless and just salty enough. The white meat inside the crunchy coating was remarkably moist. The rotisseried chicken had crisp skin and moist flesh. The potatoes and corn bread were far superior to the dirty rice and mac and cheese I had last week.The scallion cornbread tasted like really good potato kugel. The potatoes had a crunchy exterior and a creamy interior. I think The Dirty Bird is starting to take off.

Allison Vines-Rushing photo courtesy of iceculinary

3 Comments | Tags: Allison Vines-Rushing, Dirty Bird, fried chicken, New York, New York City, NYC