Wishbone in West Philly takes fried chicken to the next level
Please note: This article is published as an archive copy from Philadelphia City Paper. My City Paper is not affiliated with Philadelphia City Paper. Philadelphia City Paper was an alternative weekly newspaper in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. The last edition was published on October 8, 2015.
Wishbone (<a href="https://www.facebook.com/wishbonephilly/photos/pb.162609180558919.-2207520000.1393385467./283612298458606/?type=3&theater" target="_blank">via Facebook</a>)
Wishbone in West Philly fries chicken — but don’t call it fried chicken.
Technically, chicken fingers are fried chicken because they are (1) chicken and (2) fried. But Fried Chicken connotes something else, something very specific, something involving skin and bone, not stripped meat and pretzel crumbs. Which is what you’ll find at Wishbone, an haute cafeteria in the old Lee’s Hoagie House on a stretch of Walnut Street where University City and West Philly meet.
Former Drexel culinary instructor Alan Segel, and his onetime pupil, Dave Clouser, opened Wishbone in October. This teacher/student duo is doing its best Walter White and Jesse Pinkman impression to get campus kids addicted to its product, “craft-fried chicken,” aka chicken fingers.
Priced by the pound ($8.95 for eight to 10 tenders), the white- and dark-meat sticks start out as breasts and thighs. Segel and Clouser skin, debone, spin with a cider brine in a high-tech penetrating vacuum tumbler, batter in buttermilk, coat in Snyder’s of Hanover pretzel crumbs and fry in soybean oil. It’s a process that yields some pretty tasty chicken fingers. The white meat ones anyway; I found the thighs unpleasantly bouncy.
They do a version of this process with wings, too, but they feel like the bridesmaid to the fingers’ bride. You can get your tenders solo, with dunks like ruddy barbecue and a pea-green pesto-Parm, or piled into a Hudson Bakery French roll with pickled veggies, cilantro and sriracha aioli (the bánh mì) or blue cheese and hot sauce (the Buffalo). Just don’t miss a scoop of the gooey, four-cheese mac with a topping of more pretzel crumbs.
Segel does his French-pastry background proud with his hand-pies, making his own puff pastry dough — a laborious process —and filling the supremely flaky result with caramelized pineapple, coconut custard and lime curd (the pina colada), for example, or vanilla pastry cream and mashed rum-flambéed bananas (the bananas Foster). The hand pies are Wishbone’s sleeper hits. Equally mobile as chicken fingers, but a lot more addicting.
Wishbone | 4034 Walnut St., 215-921-3204, wishbonephilly.com. Mon.-Fri., 11 a.m.-10 p.m.; Sat.-Sun., 3 p.m.-10 p.m. Chicken, $8.95/pound; sandwiches, $7.50; pies, $4.
