The Great White Fish Chicken – Eastern Avenue
2401 Eastern Avenue SEWhat the hell is a Fish Chicken? Bad English or did the “&” not fit on the sign? Oh well. Not important.
I’ve been driving by The Great White Fish Chicken for some time now. There are three locations on the South East side of Grand Rapids. Two of them used to be Sharks II Fish Chicken. The one on Eastern used to be a Wing Heaven.
Some co-workers and I had a conversation not too long ago about the location on Eastern. A few of them live in the area and were curious about not only what a Fish Chicken is, but if it’s any good. I was driving north on Eastern and had time for lunch, so I swung in to the small parking lot to check the place out.
I’m not kidding when I say the parking lot is small. There are only five or six spaces and they are in the back of the building off Alger Street. If you’re coming off Eastern, you have to go down a narrow alley between the buildings to get to the lot.
The Great White Fish Chicken is like a lot of places that serve fried fish. The surprising thing is that the inside is clean, well lit, and nicely decorated. I love places that serve up good fried food, but they always seem to have a thin coat of grease on pretty much everything.
The kitchen is front and center when you walk in with a large order counter right up front. The dining room is off to the right. There are only a handful of tables that are sort of centered around a large LCD TV.
The menu is almost all fried fare. There are a number of fish and chicken baskets to choose from that include fries. The baskets also come as meals with dinner rolls and a pop. I don’t really like seafood at all….they call it seafood, but are catfish, smelt, and cod really seafood?
I skipped over to the whole chicken wing side of the menu and ordered the 8 wing basket. If whole wings aren’t your thing, they also fry up leg and thigh baskets as well as boneless wings, wing dings, chicken nuggets, tenders, and gizzards.
I wasn’t sure if they would take credit, so I stopped to get cash beforehand. They do actually take Visa and Mastercard, so I would have been alright, but I ended up paying cash for my basket which came out to around $7.
The chicken took about ten minutes to cook then it was boxed up then wrapped tightly in a paper bag to get keep the heat in. I needed to get back to work, so I got it to go but dining in is definitely an option.
I broke into the box on the way to the office and started in on the fries. They were a little undercooked and pretty soggy. They weren’t awful and I didn’t mind eating them, but I would have preferred them to be a little bit more crispy than they were.
The wings I had to wait until I got somewhere that would allow me to focus totally on eating. I grabbed a pop out of the vending machine then set up shop in the break room. The wings were delicious. They were juicy. They were tender. They were crunchy. They just fell apart which I went to rip them off the bone. The eight wings didn’t last very long and I really wish I had more.
I still don’t know what a Fish Chicken is, but I really don’t care. The chicken wings from The Great White Fish Chicken were delicious. I know a couple people that were looking for a good place for whole wings….this is one of those places.
Eight Wing Basket
SW Michigan Dining 
