WC’s Hot Spot Café (in Water Country USA): 8/10/13

It’s time for another special posting of my chicken tender blog from Richmond, Virginia! Only this time was not a planned chicken tender post, Alex and I just happened to find chicken tenders at our destination for the day.

For those of you who don’t know, this past weekend (8/9-8/12) I visited my friend Alex in Richmond, Virginia (you may remember him from my post of Tenders back in January). Well after a leisurely day on Friday, he decided that we should do something more exciting and so Alex, Johnny (his boyfriend), and I went to Water Country USA, Virginia’s largest water park! There we spent the whole day riding all sorts of water slides, lazing around on the lazy river and the Hubba Hubba Highway (a lazy river where you wear life vests to float instead of use inner tubes), and just having fun being with each other. While we were at Water Country USA we were able to find a place called WC’s Hot Spot Café where I could get my chicken tenders and critic them for this blog. Below is my review of said chicken tenders

The view of WC's The Hot Spot from our lunch spot.

Batter and crispiness: C+
-I gave this section a C+ because there was too much breading on these tenders (I would say the amount of breading doubled the amount of chicken in each tender), but the seasoning used in the batter had a nice, peppery taste, which I very much enjoyed. When evaluating the crispiness, I was conflicted on a grade because while the tenders were crispy in parts, they were also soggy. It was as if they just were not cooked long enough.

Tenderness and juiciness of chicken: C+
-The actual chicken in the tenders was not great quality and it was a little dry (what little chicken there was…they kind of skimped on the chicken). I wish the chicken was prepared better, but you cannot expect much from an amusement park.

Portion size/presentation: C
-I gave this section a C because I felt it was the expected size for the price of a chicken tender meal at an amusement park. Truth be told, if I had received this same meal at an actual restaurant I would have been pretty upset. This meal consisted of 5 small chicken tenders and a little, high school cafeteria style, portion of fries. Now the fries where big which I usually like, but in this case that was probably a negative because it made the portion size look even smaller.

Reheating: N/A
-Unfortunately I could not take these chicken tenders back to reheat because I had them for lunch at the water park and we were planning on spending a few more hours there. However, even though I was unable to take this meal home because of the timing, I do not think there would have been enough to take back anyways.

Side: A-
-While the portion size of the fries was rather small, I actually did like the taste and texture of them. From the first bite it was clear that they were cooked in some sort of fat based product because you could taste the fat and see the grease of the fries (some people consider this cooking method to be a negative, but I actual like the taste…just not all of the grease, which knocked this category down a notch). Two of the things I really enjoyed about the fries were the crispiness of them and the amount of saltiness. Now, if you are reading this post then you have probably read some of my other ones and you know how much I love salt…well Hot Spot does a great job with its seasoning of salt.

Description:
-Chicken strips with French fries - $8.29, drink - $2.99

 

Here is my chicken tender meal!

Overall I would give the chicken tenders at Water Country USA a C/C+. There was nothing terribly wrong about the tenders, but at the same time there was nothing spectacular about them either. While I liked the tenders I felt as though I was ripped off (which is common for amusement parks) because there was not much chicken to the actual tenders and the portion size did not match the price (especially when you added the drink into the equation). However, I would say that in terms of taste, this meal was slightly above average for standard amusement park food. In conclusion, if I ever happen to be at Water Country USA again then I will probably order the chicken tender meal again because it kept me full for most of the afternoon (I got hungry on our way home) and the tenders tasted good.

Well there you have it, my second (and final) chicken tender post from restaurants in Richmond, Virginia. I hope you enjoyed these special edition posts and look out next time for a new tender locale in Charlotte, North Carolina (the home base of Love Me Tenders).

LB