Slim Chickens ready to open in Crawley with FREE food offer: We try out town's newest restaurant

Slim Chickens opens at 12noon on Thursday and the first 30 customers will get 3 FREE chicken tenders. And we were lucky enough to have preview of the food at the restaurants soft launch – this is what we thought.

The venue, which is front of the multi-storey car park at Crawley Leisure Park, opposite Hollywood Bowl, looks fantastic with it’s striking logo.

And as my colleague Ellis Peters and I entered, we were immediately struck by the atmosphere – there was a good soundtrack coming out of the speakers, a tv with sports on and a real buzz with the patrons and the employees.

A wonderful touch we spotted straight away was the balloons on the table that were held up by kitchen roll – I sensed that this was going to be a messy meal. For those not aware, Slim Chickens is a household name in the southern states of the USA, where the brand is synonymous with quality, freshness, cooked-to-order chicken and signature sauces and it’s looking to bring the taste of the southern states of America to the UK. They already have venues in Brighton, Southampton and Bournemouth, among other places. Each venue has a mural of a guitar on the wall which contains landmarks of the area that restaurant is in. The Crawley one had Gatwick, the signal box, the Hawth and the George Hotel (see picture below).

Crawley will be the 15th venue and they are very excited about opening here. Area manager Matt Muldowney said: “Crawley is a fanastic place. We been around all the shops, we have been to the football. It’s just a really great town and it really fits in with the brand. It’s young, it’s funky, it’s fresh and I think that describes Crawley in every way.”

After having a quick look around, we decided on what to eat and although it really is just chicken on the meu, it’s so very varied it was hard to pick what we wanted.

We were told the Tenders and the Wings were the ‘hero’ items on the menu so that’s what we settled on with the mix and match 3 & 3 meal (£12.45). But we could have chosen a variety of sandwiches, salads and wraps.

That was not the end of the decision making – there are 14 sauces to pick from including Buffalo, Ranch, Blue Cheese, Honey Mustard and Korean BBQ. And for drinks there are refill soda cups or milkshakes (Budweiser will be served when it is officially open). I went for a Lotus Biscoff milkshake. We also went for a signature side of fried pickles.

The milkshake was the first thing to arrive at our table from the very efficient staff – we were informed they have been training all week for this and it showed. And my word the milkshake was good, thick, creamy and very tasty.

Then came the food. The portion size was big and the wings and tenders looked very appetising. I had a Honey BBQ glaze on my wings and they were succulent and tasty – but the standout was the Tenders. The buttermilk coating was melt-in-the-mouth and the chicken was glorious. It’s very hard to describe exactly why but it was light, succulent and divine.

In other chicken restaurants sometimes the experience can be just a little greasy but this wasn’t. The fried pickles were nice but can see them being like marmite.

Overall it was a very tasty meal and enjoyable experience as a whole. You can see a video of what I thought as I ate the food above.

You can follow Slim Chickens on Instagram @Slimchickensuk – you’ll also find them on Facebook and Twitter.