Breakfast and Dinner in one Sitting: Dame's Chicken and Waffles

Durham, NC

I've been eating a lot of spicy food lately.  It's time that I give my taste buds a break from the constant assault by fire.  This time, I'm branching out and headed to try a Southern legend: chicken and waffles.

What exactly is chicken and waffles?  I think a late night foodie was looking for a midnight snack and couldn't decide on whether to eat a second dinner or skip straight to breakfast and POOF!  Chicken and Waffles!  I'm not sure if this is real life, but however it came about, it was a great idea and I wish I had discovered it sooner. 

While visiting the city of Durham, NC, I stopped in the "almost world famous" Dame's Chicken and Waffles.  It was packed this Saturday evening, but luckily we made reservations.  I've had chicken, and I've had waffles, but I've never really had chicken and waffles together so I wasn't exactly sure what to expect.  As we walked into the restaurant, you could smell fried chicken, butter, syrup, something fruity, something nutty, cinnamony, and even hotsauce.  Doesn't that seem like clashing flavors?  I didn't know what to think at this point.  Luckily, the front of the menu had a very nice explanation of what was to come and helped me get a grip over the overwhelming number of smells.    

 

First things first... my meal was going to consist of chicken and waffles.  Simple enough right?  No!  This is where it gets complicated.  The different styles of chicken made up the different menu items.  Then the waffles come in different flavors: classic, sweet potato, gingerbread, fresh blueberry, and vegan.  Once you pick your waffle flavor, next come the shmears.  Shmears are flavored sweet whipped butters.  You can pick from strawberry, chocolate-hazelnut, maple-pecan, blueberry, vanilla-almond, orange-honey, and peach-apricot.   The combinations are endless.  Well not really.  There are 40 combinations of waffle flavors and shmear if you count having no shmear as a flavor and you are on a diet and you restrict yourself to a max of one flavor of shmear, but you can get as many flavors of shmear as you want so.... ok my head hurts.  Too much math for me.  Let's get back to the food.

I was hungry I ordered two plates.  Well... more like I shared two plates with my travel buddy.  We ordered the Dueling Roosters - Rd. I and The Frizzled Fowl. 

The Dueling Roosters came with four wings with Calypso BBQ sauce, a classic waffle but remember you can change this and your choice of two shmears.  This waffle stayed classy with chocolate-hazelnut and vanilla-almond shmears.

The Frizzled Fowl was a panko crusted Chicken cutlet, a classic waffle, with blueberry shmear, drizzled w/ plum sauce and almonds.  I didn't want to customize it and decided to just go with what the professionals had already picked out for me.

Look!  The cutlet loves me.  Can't wait to eat it!

Don't forget the sides!  I ordered the spicy greens and the mac 'n cheese.

So how was the food you ask?  Delicious!  The waffles had a nice crisp to them, but were still fluffy in the middle.  The shmears were very light and flavorful and paired nicely with the plain waffle; no syrups needed.  The wings were pretty ordinary and needed the slightly spicy BBQ sauce to kick up the flavor.  The cutlet on the other hand was surprisingly juicy and tasty.  The plum sauce was very savory and made your mouth water for more.  The greens were standard and the mac 'n cheese was pretty standard too except for the bit of rosemary they put in it.  Interesting twist but it didn't blow me away. 

So if they call it chicken and waffles, are you supposed to eat the chicken first, and then the waffles?  Or do you eat the waffle first, and then the chicken?  Or maybe you them together?  Just to confuse you more, there was syrup and hot sauce on the table.  Do I put syrup on my waffle?  Do I hot sauce the chicken even if I have plum sauce on it?  I didn't know what was right so I did tried it all.  I tried the waffle with shmear and chicken separately, then I tried the waffle with shmear with the chicken, and then mixed it up with syrup and hot sauce combinations.  My favorite was waffle with shmear and syrup and the plum sauced chicken.  It was the perfect balance of sweet and savory.  If you are wondering, I did try a bite of waffle, chicken, shmear, syrup, and hot sauce.  My taste buds were so confused but it wasn't that bad.  Maybe a more experienced chicken and waffles foodie could handle it.  I definitely want to become a more experienced chicken and waffles foodie. 

Overall, How Nuts Are We about Dame's Chicken and Waffles?

Food: 4.5 coconuts
Service: 3.5 coconuts.  The restaurant was really busy and sometimes the waitress was not around but she definitely made up for it at the end. 
Repeatability: 5 coconuts.  So many combinations!