Name a Better Fry in Chicago. I'll Wait.
A Virginia man spent three years in Paris kitchens, then opened a one-man ghost kitchen in East Garfield Park. His thousand-layer fry might be the best in the city.
Bobby grew up in Virginia, which means fried chicken isn't something he learned so much as something he absorbed. Then he spent the last three years cooking in Paris kitchens, learning French technique from the inside. In July he brought both halves of that résumé to Chicago and opened Bobby's Fried Chicken.
You won't find a dining room with his name on it. Bobby runs a ghost kitchen inside The Hatchery, a culinary incubator in East Garfield Park, right off the Kedzie Green Line stop. It's him, by himself, running the whole operation, which is why it's pickup and delivery only. You can grab your order and eat it inside The Hatchery, though, and that's what I'd do. These fries were built to travel, but nothing beats them five minutes out of the fryer.
The fries here blew our mind. Bobby calls them thousand-layer potatoes. They're based on pommes Anna, a 19th-century Paris potato dish credited to chef Adolphe Dugléré at the Café Anglais and named after a courtesan. That sentence is so french, it's basically wearing a beret and smoking.
The process is a lot of work. Potatoes get sliced paper-thin, layered, and pressed into a solid block. Then the block is cut into fry shapes and deep-fried. Bobby isn't the first person to try this. The pressed-and-fried version has been making the rounds online for years. But making it once for a video and making it every day as a menu item are two different jobs, and Bobby is doing the second one. And excelling at it.
The outside is golden and crisp enough to shatter. The inside stays soft, and you can see every layer when you break one open, like a paperback that got left in the rain and dried beautifully. Dip them in his house dijon mayo, which has enough mustard to cut the richness without taking over.
An order is $5.99. For the work that goes into them, that's a steal.
If the fries were the whole menu, Bobby's would still be worth the trip. They aren't. This man can fry chicken.
Both sandwiches come on brioche. The buttermilk gets apple jam, that same dijon mayo, romaine for crunch, a piece of perfectly crispy chicken, and house pickles. The pickles are the quiet star. They have enough sweetness and acidity to cut through everything fried and rich around them, and they're why every bite feels balanced instead of heavy. $11.99.
The buffalo has more personality. The house sauce has real acidity, and it's lighter on butter than a classic buffalo, which surprised me given the Paris credentials. It works. The chicken stays crisp instead of getting buried. Then Bobby adds a thick, smoky caramelized onion confit paste with Indian-inspired spices, which is the kind of choice you only make when you know exactly why you're making it. $12.99.
I like the buttermilk a little more. You won't lose ordering either one.
You know I love a chocolate chip cookie, and Bobby didn't let me down. His is made with demerara, a less refined sugar that brings a deep molasses flavor. The crystals don't fully dissolve, which gives the cookie a loose, crumbly bite, and it's finished with Maldon salt. It won't make my best-cookie list, but it's a good cookie and the right way to end the bag.
Fried food and delivery usually don't get along. Steam gets trapped, crust goes soft, and what shows up at your door is a sad memory of what left the kitchen. Bobby clearly designed around that. My order came by delivery, and the fries still cracked and the chicken was still crisp.
There's something worth respecting in all of this. One guy, one ghost kitchen, a technique he learned an ocean away, and a menu where every item has a reason for being there. That's not a concept. That's a cook who loves what he does and wants you to taste it.
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