Fish Express
620 Riverview DriveI’ve got a fried chicken problem. Obviously.
I never pass up gas station chicken when I come across it but I still feel like there’s something missing from today’s society. Good fried chicken places that aren’t a chain.
We had fried chicken all the time growing up. Maybe I’m just not remembering it right but it never came from a chain. My family rarely did Kentucky Fried Chicken and we didn’t have a Popeye’s until I was high school. I can vaguely remember a place we used to get it from and I know my grandma used to make her own. That was the best part about our road trips to Southern Illinois for the family reunion.
It seems like all that left now are grocery store deli’s, chain restaurants, and fish places that usually have whole chicken wings.
There’s really only one place in Kalamazoo that fits in to that latter category.
Fish Express is on Riverview Drive and Hotop in Kalamazoo’s Eastside Neighborhood. The small deep fried food restaurant has been there a little over twenty years. The building sits right along Riverview Drive but there’s a nice big parking lot between the building and Hotop so getting in and out is pretty simple.
I’ve eaten at this Fish Express a few times but not recently. The first time I wrote a blog post was back in 2010. I’ve stopped in occasionally in the years since but apparently it’s been a while. It now appears to be owned by the same family that owns the Shell station downtown where the Chester’s Chicken is. When I walked in, one of the guys seemed to recognize me and asked if I switching things up and getting some fish. I wasn’t. I was getting chicken…just different chicken.
The restaurant is counter service. You can order online or call ahead but I did neither. I kind of knew what I wanted. I wanted chicken. The menu board hangs kind of in the kitchen. The person working the register also looked kind of familiar to me as someone who works or used to work at the downtown Shell as well. I put in my order for the 10 wing meal which comes with fries and a drink. The cost was right around $17. I was told it would take about 15 minutes to fry everything up fresh.
The restaurant is pretty big for this kind of place that focuses mostly on carrypout. The building, at one time, was a Chicago Subs & Grill and there were probably more tables but now there are a lot fewer tables and more open space. The business was sold to the current owners in 2017 and I’m pretty sure they did a remodel of the place. The floor tiles look fairly new and the old color scheme was more red and yellow. Now the space has taken on light blue and red tiles with hints of the yellow still in the trim of spaces that are closed off to the public.
There are not many tables but there are a few mostly along the walls. I had a little bit of time to wait so I just plopped down at one of those tables and took care of responding to some emails while I was waiting.
I got the box of food almost exactly 15 minutes after I ordered. It was so full the cashier couldn’t even close the box. I told her it was fine. She shook on some of the same lemon pepper seasoning I get on the chicken at the Shell station then she grabbed me a can of Orange Faygo and I headed back to the office to eat.
I started with a few of the fries first. They were pretty unremarkable frozen French fries. The kind I expect from a place like this. They had some of the lemon pepper seasoning on them as well which gave them some flavor. I also used the hot sauce I asked for for the chicken but realized I didn’t want to make a mess actually putting it on the chicken. It felt a little weird to dip fries in to hot sauce but it was actually pretty good. I still got the hot sauce taste I wanted..just on the fries, not on the chicken.
There were ten big, juicy, crispy chicken wings packed in to the box. They all had a little bit of that lemon pepper seasoning on it but even those that didn’t were still really tasty. This isn’t the kind of chicken that is hand breaded with a thick layer and fried up with that super crispy crunch. They are still super crispy and that outer layer holds all of the juiciness in the meat. This isn’t the kind of chicken I really ate a lot of growing up but it’s a kind of chicken I’ve grown to like a lot more since living in Michigan. It seems like the fish places are more common here than where I grew up.
Fish Express doesn’t quite satisfy that craving for good, crispy fried chicken but that’s not the kind of place this is. The wings from fish express are quite tasty- and craveable in their own right. I don’t know why I haven’t been here in probably close to ten years. I drive by it all the time but whenever it comes time to think about lunch, it doesn’t register. I like these kind of chicken places and wish there were a couple of more options like it.
SW Michigan Dining 