From discardable to delectable It’s been a half-century since a penny-wise New England restaurateur created the chicken finger, now a savoury staple By: David Sanderson Posted: 4:26 PM CDT Thursday, Jul. 25, 2024

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This article was published 25/07/2024 (772 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

July 27 is National Chicken Finger Day, an annual festivity dedicated to the crispy, flavourful victual that has become a staple in fast-food outlets and fine dining establishments alike, including a tony New York City resto that coats its fingers with — pass the milk, please and thanks — ground-up Cap’n Crunch cereal.

National Chicken Finger Day is particularly noteworthy this time around, as 2024 marks 50 years since chicken fingers, also called chicken tenders, were purportedly invented at a long-standing, Greek-style restaurant in Manchester, N.H.

Victoria Riese is a general manager at the Puritan Backroom, which was founded by her great-grandfather Arthur Pappas in 1917. The way Riese understands the story, in 1974 her grandfather Charlie Pappas, Arthur’s son, asked his supplier what became of the thin strips of meat he removed from full-size chicken breasts, ahead of distributing the trimmed-down product to area restaurants. He tossed them out, came his reply.

“My grandfather hated the thought of good food going to waste, so he told the fellow he’d take his leftovers, which he proceeded to bread, fry and sell to his customers,” Riese says when reached at her place of work in Manchester, declared the “Chicken Tender Capital of the World” in 2022 by its then-mayor.

“At first the guy was giving my grandfather the extra bits for free. But when he realized how much the restaurant was making off its chicken fingers, he started to charge him.”

The Puritan Backroom, which counts comedic actor and former Backroom employee Adam Sandler as a regular customer, goes through between six and eight tons of chicken fingers every week. The immensely popular selection, which comes in four varieties, regular, coconut, buffalo and extra-spicy, isn’t relegated to the appetizer side of the menu, either. There’s chicken-finger pizza, chicken-finger wraps… even chicken-finger parmigiana.

“They’re also delicious on salads, with a house-made blue-cheese dressing,” Riese boasts. “To me, that’s the best of both worlds. You’re eating healthy and you’re having fried chicken.”

Here in Winnipeg, chicken-finger aficionados shouldn’t let the absence of Mitzi’s Chicken Finger Restaurant, which served its namesake entry for 46 years before calling it quits in April, spoil National Chicken Finger Day. Not when a quick tour of downtown and the surrounding area tells us the ubiquitous dish — naturally presented with Winnipeg-centric honey-dill sauce — is more popular than ever in local kitchens.

 

Elephant & Castle 

350 St. Mary Ave.

Given that Mitzi’s was situated a couple of blocks over, it isn’t surprising to learn diners who ventured there only to realize it’s shuttered have made their way to Elephant & Castle, tucked inside the Delta Hotel, instead.

Have those same diners been pleasantly surprised with the British-style pub’s variation of Mitzi’s former No. 1 seller? That would be putting it mildly, according to general manager Dwight Benson.

“I’m obviously biased but from what people tell us, we have some of the best chicken fingers in Winnipeg,” Benson says, noting that E&C’s fingers are marinated in butter milk before being double-breaded with a spice mixture containing…

“Sorry, we can’t tell you that,” pipes in assistant GM Marissa Murray, breaking into a grin.

Depending on the day of the week, chicken fingers are either the first- or second-most requested item at E&C, Murray says.

“They’re sort of like a go-to, if you’re having trouble deciding what you’re in the mood for.”

And if you still can’t make up your mind, Benson says their chicken fingers are also available in slider form, topped with coleslaw, pickle slices and house-made honey-dill sauce.

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Rudy’s Eat & Drink

375 Graham Ave.

General manager Mackenzie Robb wasn’t previously familiar with National Chicken Finger Day, but if you’re asking her, every day is chicken-finger day at Rudy’s, located on the ground level of Manitoba Hydro Place.

“Our fingers have a super-strong following, almost cult-like,” Robb says with a chuckle.

“There are offices in the area that will arrive in groups of eight to 20, where every single person will order some variation of our chicken-finger entrée, served either with caesar salad, sweet-potato fries or onion rings.”

During the summer months, the Downtown Winnipeg Farmers’ Market is staged directly outside Rudy’s, every second Thursday.

Robb and her staff regularly take advantage of the get-together by scooping up Manitoba-made ingredients for their house-made honey-dill sauce.

“We try to use fresh dill as often as possible and where better to get it than a farmers’ market?” she says, adding they also rely on Ferris Farms, another market vendor, for some of their honey.

“Rudy’s also has gluten-free breadcrumbs, so we can do gluten-free tenders and fried-chicken sandwiches. Not many places have that option,” she adds.

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White Star Diner

258 Kennedy St.

Owner Bruce Smedts introduced chicken fingers to the menu in 2015, shortly after he relocated the White Star Diner from Albert Street to his present digs on Kennedy Street, just south of Portage Avenue.

The nautically themed nook, named for the long-gone British shipping line responsible for the Titanic, was already well-known for its inventive sandwiches and burgers. Chicken fingers granted Smedts the opportunity to get creative, yet again.

“I came up with I call the Frank’s grilled cheese, which is a grilled mozza-and-cheddar cheese sandwich with chicken fingers tossed in Frank’s hot sauce,” he says, noting he coats his fingers beforehand with his own White Star seasoning mix, a blend of 10 herbs and spices.

If you think chicken fingers are the ultimate finger food, think again, says Smedts, who plans to retire sometime in the next 10 months. (The White Star Diner is currently for sale.)

“I’ve definitely seen people eat their chicken fingers with a knife and fork, cutting them up very fastidiously. To me it looks rather odd but you know what they say: the customer’s always right.”

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Bodegoes

333 St. Mary Ave. (Cityplace)

A couple of years ago, a group of Australian high school exchange students popped by Bodegoes in Cityplace ahead of attending a Winnipeg Jets game across the street at Canada Life Centre.

All of them ordered chicken fingers, but when co-owner Andrew Van Seggelen delivered a platter of dipping sauces, Bodegoes’ signature honey-dill sauce was the one that caused the most consternation.

“They kind of picked around it a bit, not sure what to make of it, but when they were all done, the honey-dill was the only sauce that had been cleaned out, completely.”

Bodegoes’ chicken fingers, which are available at the Cityplace and Blue Cross Park locations, arrive in various sizes, from two fingers all the way up to six.

If you have a craving for something a bit different, that’s doable, too.

“A couple of customers have asked me to throw one or two inside their pitas, but probably the most out-there request was a person who wanted me to add a few to their coconut green curry with rice noodles,” Van Seggelen says.

“I haven’t tried that myself but they assured me it tasted great.”

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Zorba’s Greek & Italian

The Forks Market

Talk about a culinary match made in heaven.

In 2021 Zorba’s owner Penny Yakubowski paired her resto’s chicken fingers with poutine to create what is presently billed as honey-dill chicken poutine, as a tribute to her father Jim Iliopoulos, who established Zorba’s at The Forks Market in 1989.

Her father has operated restaurants in Winnipeg since 1977, Yakubowski says. In 1982 he opened Greetalia Pizza in Garden City Shopping Centre.

Soon thereafter, he introduced chicken fingers to the kids’ menu so when families dropped by, young ones would have alternatives other than Greek and Italian food.

“Except chicken fingers soon gained popularity with adults and children,” Yakubowski points out.

Ten years after Zorba’s opened at The Forks, John Iliopoulos, Yakubowski’s brother, began marketing their house-made honey-dill sauce in retail outlets.

“Our sauce has become a staple household condiment and is now well-known around the world,” Yakubowski says of the 2020 Steamie Award-winner for international condiment of the year.

“It is sold in most retail stores in Manitoba and Western Canada.”

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Johnny G’s

177 McDermot Ave.

Johnny G’s opened in the East Exchange 28 years ago. Owner Johnny Giannakis says there has been nary a day since then that chicken fingers haven’t been the most requested item on the late-night spot’s expansive menu.

Giannakis feels the secret to their success is that every last chicken finger brought out of the kitchen is made to order.

“Lots of places remove them from the freezer and throw them directly into the deep fryer, but not us,” he says, seated in his dining space, flanked by a cavalcade of blown-up photos of rock stars. “To make a good chicken finger you have to bread it to order, so that it’s juicy on the inside and crispy on the outside. Plus, our breading is a little bit spicy, to give them some kick.”

In September 2022 Giannakis’s son Foti proposed a novel idea for Le Burger Week: two quarter-pound patties topped with bacon and all the fixings, sandwiched between chicken fingers-as-hamburger bun.

“I had my doubts but we sold tons… we could barely keep up,” Giannakis says, shaking his head.

One more thing; Giannakis, who moved to Winnipeg from Greece in 1979 at age 17, says chicken fingers are practically unheard of in his home nation, and if a person was to take, say, Johnny G’s recipe and introduce them there, they’d probably make a fortune.

“It won’t be me — at 62 my best days are behind me — but somebody would do well, no doubt about it.”

david.sanderson@freepress.mb.ca