Bludorn team launches fried chicken concept
The team behind Bludorn, a runaway hit since it opened in 2020, is turning to fried chicken to strike gold once again.
Chicky Boy, which is being spearheaded by chef du cuisine Chase Voelz and general manager Cole Parry, is a fried chicken concept that debuted over the weekend inside the glitzy Fourth Ward restaurant. One hundred sandwiches sold out within 25 minutes, according to the restaurant, and Houstonians on social media were already asking when they could get their hands on an order.
What started off as an occasional dish for staff meal before dinner service — commonly referred to as family meal in the restaurant industry — morphed into Chicky Boy. Voelz estimates he’s served at least 1,000 fried sandwiches over the past year before this weekend’s launch.
“We love what we do here, but we also love making fried chicken sandwiches,” said Parry. “We don’t see these two things as being mutually exclusive.”
Naturally, the standards are high for Voelz and Parry at Bludorn, where diners pay over $60 for a lobster-chicken pot pie.
Their attention to detail means the dark meat chicken is brined in buttermilk overnight, the fat is scraped off each chicken thigh and each piece is deep fried in 350-degree oil for about three to five minutes.
The crisp chicken can be ordered with a house-made cheddar biscuit or sesame bun. Each order (currently priced at $8.25) comes with a slice of cheddar cheese, shredded lettuce, pickles, a drizzle of hot honey and a secret Sunday sauce.
“It takes up a little more space and is more
labor intensive than you think,” Parry said.
The only other item on the menu at the moment are tater tot waffle fries ($2.75), which they said they may experiment with further.
“Amount of crunch is next level,” wrote Danielle Dubois, a local food influencer behind @hangryhoustonian with 117,000 followers.
Everything sold out as if the fried chicken were an in-demand fashion label or Hypebeast drop — it doesn’t hurt that executive chef and owner Aaron Bludorn, whom Voelz and Parry said supported the idea, helped promote Chicky Boy.
Houstonian’s insatiable demand for fried chicken — which is so wide ranging that it can be broken down specifically to sandwiches — is not waning anytime soon. The buildup for NBA star Shaquille O’Neal’s Big Chicken restaurant has been followed closely the past year and fried chicken restaurants keep popping up.
Chicky Boy’s next pop-up, which will be announced on its Instagram account, will likely take place on another Saturday, either on Feb. 18 and 25, Parry said.
While the concept is in its early stages, the two men behind it are also focused on keeping it fun, they said.
Voelz, who recalls numerous fried chicken dinners with his family growing up in Indiana, and Parry are both unabashedly fans of fast food (they both ate breakfast from McDonald’s on opening day). They said they picked Chicky Boy as the business name because it “sounds friendly” and “we didn’t want it to sound too cool.”
A brick-and-mortar location may one day be in the works, but for now, they’re still fine-tuning Chicky Boy. The sandwiches are cradled in silver, tin foil-like wrappers, but they’re still searching for gold paper to copy what Wendy’s used to do with its sandwiches in the ’90s. Until then, they want to keep selling as much fried chicken as possible.
“It’s not changing the world,” Parry said. “It’s fun and comforting.”