Barberton Chicken...worth the detour?

I'm going to find myself travelling on business to the Cleveland area in a couple of weeks...and have been hearing about the supposedly "best fried chicken in the U.S." offered by several places in the town of Barberton, OH....Since this would be quite a bit out of my way, just wondering if anyone here has tried it....and if it truly is extraordinary enough to warrant my time to get down there (it's south of Akron I believe)

Thanks

I wandered through Barberton looking for it once and couldn't find it; wound up having a decent hamburger at a bar instead. So my only advice is, have good directions!

There are some reports on Barberton chicken (Belgrade Gardens and Whitehouse Chicken) by LTHers here.

Thanks Matt. Needless to say, my answer is that Belgrade Gardens is worth the detour, no doubt.

Having read about Barberton Chicken in Jane and Michael Stern's "Road Food," my wife and I stopped on the way back home from West Virginia.
The chicken certainly is crisp and deep brown, almost a mahogany color. I learned why-- they fry it in lard.

So, if you like your chicken with an aroma reminiscent of an old-school Chinese restaurant, by all means, go. Personally, I found it quite unappealing.

Paul SL wrote:Having read about Barberton Chicken in Jane and Michael Stern's "Road Food," my wife and I stopped on the way back home from West Virginia.
The chicken certainly is crisp and deep brown, almost a mahogany color. I learned why-- they fry it in lard.

So, if you like your chicken with an aroma reminiscent of an old-school Chinese restaurant, by all means, go. Personally, I found it quite unappealing.

Hmmm, the taste of lard. But I am guessing you went to Barberton, the restaurant, not just Barberton the town? Just trying to be clear. And you did not let the chicken rest before eating?

Cause I will certainly stand by my blissful experience with Belgrade Gardens once the chicken rested, but then I think lard is a fine thing, too.

I totally think it's more than worth a stop. Then again, I love lard. That's the good ol' Eastern European kid in me talking. But, to be fair, I didn't really notice a particularly lardy flavor, or anything. Just a hint of the smell.

dicksond wrote: But I am guessing you went to Barberton, the restaurant, not just Barberton the town? Just trying to be clear. And you did not let the chicken rest before eating?

I can't recall the name of the restaurant. According to the Sterns, it's "one of five locations in the Akron area serving "Barberton Chicken..."

The address listed in "Road Food" is 4396 Hopocan Ave., Barberton, OH.

And no, I didn't let it rest. Nor did it let me, later that evening.

Paul SL wrote:I can't recall the name of the restaurant. According to the Sterns, it's "one of five locations in the Akron area serving "Barberton Chicken..."
The address listed in "Road Food" is 4396 Hopocan Ave., Barberton, OH.

In Edge's Fried Chicken: An American Story (2004), he writes that four of the chicken restaurants survive: Belgrade Gardens, Hopocan Gardens, Village Inn and White House Chicken. He also provides a recipe and firmly asserts that it's all about the lard.

Belgrade Gardens (the original) (dicksond's report)
401 E. State St
Barberton, OH
330-745-0113

Belgrade Gardens
3476 Massillon Road
Uniontown, OH
330-896-3396

The address provided by Paul above is for Hopocan Gardens, the first spin-off from the progenitor, Belgrade Gardens.

Hopocan Gardens
4396 Hopocan Avenue Ext
Norton, OH
330-825-9923


Milich's Village Inn
4444 Cleveland Massillon Rd
Barberton, OH
330-825-4553

Finally:
White House Chicken (Binko's report)
180 Wooster Rd N
Barberton, OH
330-745-0449
White House has a handful of franchises in the area.

In digging for some of this information, I also found an assertion that Tiebels in Schererville has "more than a passing resemblance" to Barberton Chicken, and is quite a bit closer to us here.

Teibel's
US-30 & Hwy 41
Schererville, IN 46375
219-865-2000

The Sterns, who seem to have examined tiny Barberton in great detail, also report on a Hungarian restaurant there. You can hear about it on The Splendid Table's 8/26 show, here:

http://splendidtable.publicradio.org/li ... 06_08.html

Last question..does Belgrade Gardens serve a beverage known as "beer" and do they provide a place to drink this, known as a "bar"?

OK..I'll answer my own question in the thread title..and it's "NO" unfortunately..

Just tried Belgrade Gardens....looked great...but pretty damn bland...very disappointing

ParkLaBrea wrote:OK..I'll answer my own question in the thread title..and it's "NO" unfortunately..

Just tried Belgrade Gardens....looked great...but pretty damn bland...very disappointing

Now that we have officially agreed that Belgrade Gardens is mediocre for dining in, will someone else please try it as carry out and see if my experience after two hours - that it is great at that moment - is theirs, too?

On our way from Chicago to Pittsburgh we made a slight detour to Barberton, a bit southwest of Akron. I think we all agreed it was well worth the extra miles.

Our first stop was Belgrade Gardens, the oldest of Barberton's chicken houses. As I understand it they pretty much defined the genre: bird cut into twelve serving pieces (including two sections of back), minimally seasoned breading, fried in lard, skin-on fries, sweet-sour coleslaw, tomato-rice hot sauce.







I thought it was a terrific meal. Chicken was damn near perfect, fresh from the lard with a crisp but ungreasy shell surrounding the juicy meat. Even the breast was wonderfully moist. The fries were some of the best in recent memory, absolutely outstanding. Slaw was just fine and the hot sauce was an appealing oddity, essentially stewed tomatoes with rice and only the slightest hint of heat.

Next up was Whitehouse, another old chicken fryer. If we hadn't just eaten at Belgrade Gardens I'm sure I would have been even more impressed.





Everything was quite good but each dish was a notch or two below our earlier meal. The chicken was delivered much too quickly for fried-to-order but it held up well. The fries weren't close to Belgrade's superlative version. Slaw was sweeter and the sauce might have had a bit more kick. Nothing to be ashamed of at all.

I only wish we'd had time to visit Barberton's other chicken restaurants. Clearly this town takes its poultry very seriously. For a fun discussion of Barberton chicken, see John T Edge's "The Barberton Birds." Also there's more discussion of Barberton in this thread.

Belgrade Gardens
401 E State St
Barberton OH
330-745-0113

Whitehouse Chicken
180 Wooster Rd N
Barberton OH
330-745-0449

Rene G wrote:

Please note the chicken piece just left of the coleslaw, it is a chicken back. Another unique feature to the Barbeton chicken is butchering style of the chicken back: split along the spine with one half or the other having the tail. The menu at Belgrade Gardens helpfully stated the chicken backs were chicken ribs and available as an entree. Chicken backs happen to be my favorite cut: I love the oysters, I love the wee tenderloin, I especially love the tail and all that lovely crispy skin. I was thrilled to find a region where the chicken backs are a respected menu offering.

The White House Chicken offers some information on the history:

History

Well where do we start? Founded in 1942, Barberton Chicken and its tomato rice mixture called hot sauce was introduced to the public by accident. A small restaurant in Barberton made the chicken for its employees, not for customers. After they saw them eating it they asked if they could try a little taste. Soon customers would come in for one thing; the chicken and hot sauce. They added cole slaw and fresh cut french fries and the Barberton Chicken Dinner was born.

The unique cut of the chicken goes back to the Depression:

Why do they cut the chicken this way?

During the depression, families needed to find a way to cut the chickens to yield the most pieces without any waste. Times were hard. When the first chicken house opened, they cut the chicken this same way and passed the efficiency onto their customers in the form of low prices - an idea that is still popular 50 years later.

For a pocket of regional food offering and history, it is definitely worthy of a detour.

Regards,

Cathy2 wrote:I was thrilled to find a region where the chicken backs are a respected menu offering.

The next day we made our way to Baltimore's Lexington Market where deep fried chicken backs were on offer at one of the stalls. Truly a wonderful part of the country.

The only time I'd had a fried chicken back was eating KFC as a child whilst in Canada; We thought we'd been ripped off. I guess it's all a matter of perspective.

In Cleveland last fall, we made the 30 mile trip to Barberton to visit a couple chicken houses. Belgrade Gardens was much as I remembered it, the grounds especially pretty with autumn colors.



The big surprise was the chicken and dumpling soup ($3 for a cup).



Great broth, great dumplings, great value. They probably have lots of necks, feet, etc left after cutting up the birds so it stands to reason they would make good broth. Dumplings, seemingly cooked to order, are worthy accompaniments. I can't imagine visiting Belgrade Gardens again without ordering soup.

The main event didn't disappoint.





The chicken has a thick golden coat, its breading of flour, egg and crumbs crisped by a bath in hot lard. Belgrade Gardens has been slinging chicken since 1933 (they pretty much defined the Barberton chicken style) and their experience shows. Details I appreciate include the little bone baskets and the streamlined (but somewhat incomprehensible) checks.





We also stopped at Hopocan Gardens, another of Barberton's old chicken houses, for a child's portion to go.



All in all, I didn't think it measured up to Belgrade. The chicken had a thinner breading and less flavor overall. Both the sauce and fries were significantly better at Belgrade.

Belgrade Gardens
401 E State St
Barberton OH
330-745-0113
http://www.belgradegardens.com/

Hopocan Gardens
4396 Hopocan Av
Barberton OH
330-825-9923
http://www.hopocangardens.com/

Well, I finally got to Barberton after many years to try the chicken. Belgrade Gardens, specifically.

Yes, it's fried in lard (and your brain will say "Chinese restaurant" as you walk through the place). I admire their cooking it the old-school way but it's never going to be my favorite; I'm just used to the peanut oil-with-a-touch-of-lard style, not pure lard (also, with a crust that's been seasoned more than this).

That said, I was very happy with:

1) the chicken when doused with the tomato-vinegar sauce, which was really good
2) the fries, very nice
3) the cole slaw, a no-mayo vinegary style which was really amazingly fresh and tasty
4) the slice of apple pie I took home and ate when I got back to Chicago

So this meal was much better than the sum of its oddly-cut chicken parts. I also just liked that it was a big, bustling, somewhat impersonal but very well run Sunday dinner place in a small, rather beatdown town, that's been around since 1933, and with a fair dash of Hungarianness thrown in. I'm very happy I finally got to Belgrade Gardens.

Mike G wrote:Well, I finally got to Barberton after many years to try the chicken. Belgrade Gardens, specifically.

What a coincidence! We ate at Belgrade Gardens less than three hours ago. Had an excellent chicken soup with house-made noodles, slaw, leg-n-thigh, fries and hot sauce (really stewed tomatoes with rice).







I'm 18% of the way to a free chicken dinner.

Rene G wrote:

Cathy2 wrote:I was thrilled to find a region where the chicken backs are a respected menu offering.

The next day we made our way to Baltimore's Lexington Market where deep fried chicken backs were on offer at one of the stalls. Truly a wonderful part of the country.

The best part...next to the pupiks, wings and livers.

Ron,

Thanks for saying it for me. I love the backs from the oyster to the high crispy skin to meat ratio. I had some quail over the weekend, where the best part was the crispy wings I ate completely: flesh, meat and bone.

Are the pupiks aka as the Pope's nose or tail? There is fierce competition for that piece of chicken real estate in my household.

Regards,

Cathy,

Pupik is Yiddish for stomach (gizzard). LAZ, please correct me if my pidgeon Yiddish isn't exactly right. The subject makes me think of my Bubbe's friend whose myna bird cursed in Yiddish! Hilarious.

In my family, the pupik referred to the belly button (180 degrees from the pope's nose). Since the chicken comes from an egg (well duh), logically it cannot have a belly button.

NOTE: Just checked my well worn copy of The Joys Of Yiddish by Leo Rosten and confirmed what I already knew: Pupik is defined in one word, "Navel".

Buddy

Navel...stomach...gizzard...whatever. In my family, we fought over those feet and pupiks!

Peter,

New camera? Or a dining companion's photos? Looks like some great fried chicken, regardless.

If, for some reason, you find yourself back in the Akron area jonesing for some good fried chicken from a pizza joint, many of the northside pizza places also specialize in "Italian Fried Chicken", the best of which is moist, crispy, lightly breaded with what appear to be breadcrumbs and garlicky.

I found it to be far superior to the Barberton Chicken.

The best that I have sampled is from a takeout only place called Mama Rosa's on Tallmadge Avenue a couple of miles north of that city's dead downtown.

I have never tried their pizza. But, at $3.99 for a large one item pie, it might be worth trying, too.

Mama Rosa's Pizza and Subs
184 E Tallmadge Ave
Akron, OH 44310
(330) 253-8400
Takeout Only‎

gleam wrote:New camera?

Yes, thanks for noticing. I got a new S90 a couple months ago and couldn't be happier with it so far. I see Canon recently introduced the S95, addressing some relatively minor (but common) complaints about the S90. It looks like a significant improvement but whether it's worth the extra $$ I'm not sure.

I had dinner at Belgrade Gardens this evening. I really did NOT like the chicken. It was prepared fresh. The breast meat was very tender. However, the amount of breading was really off-putting. I made it through about two pieces when I had to throw in the towel and say "no more.". I also did not like the unusual cutting of the chicken.

I thought the Cole slaw was excellent even though I generally like the creamy better. I wish they had added celery seed.

The hot sauce was a mixture of stewed tomatoes with rice and hot yellow peppers. Unusual but pretty good nonetheless.

The green beans were straight from the can and were absolutely tasteless.