A month or two ago, a few friends and I made our maiden trip to Angelo's. As you may recall from my last post on the Portuguese Chicken Wars, Angelo's is taking a new tact in the ever expanding Portuguese Chicken market in Kensington. For instead of your basic over-the-plate offerings of fast food Portuguese Chicken, Angelo's has gone classy on us. And I'm not talking Ron Burgundy "You stay classy, San Diego" classy, oh no. I'm talking classy classy. This is a restaurant first, with its take away operation very much secondary. So on this first trip of ours, the group decided to do the full sit down experience.* And I'm far from thrilled to say that it was a mixed bag.
*If we're being completely honest here -- and when it comes to Portuguese Chicken, have I ever led you astray?** -- this choice was forced on us more than anything else because, well, Angelo's hadn't even started to offer their take away menu yet.
**Don't answer that.
We started off with two appetizers*: garlic prawns and BBQ chorizo. Both very solid and succulent dishes, although not great value considering the small portions and price. Then we moved on to the mains. Two people had the steak, two -- myself included -- had the slow roasted lamb and one had the BBQ chicken. The lamb and chicken were both very good. The steak, on the other hand, a little bland.
*I should note here that in Australia, appetizers are actually called entrées, and entrées -- or at least as we know them in the US -- are called mains. Which, when you think about what the word "entrée" means, really makes a lot more sense.
So like I said, a mixed bag. But we all left determined to try those chicken burgers once the take away operation was up and running.
A few weekends later, we finally made our move. Shorty and I planned ahead on Saturday, so for that afternoon, I starved myself. No way was I going to go in there on anything but an empty stomach.
Three of us entered the restaurant later that night. Shorty and I ordered the Portugalia Burger, which the menu describes as follows: "Chicken breast on a sesame bun, topped with cheese, a slice of smoked chilli chicken breast, lettuce, tomato and mayo". Ummmm, does that mean there are two chicken breasts in there? And one of them is plain while the other is a smoked chilli chicken breast? Or is that just a typo? Our other friend ordered the Angelo's Burger, which is described as follows: "Chicken breast on a sesame bun, topped with pineapple, onion, a slice of smoked chilli chicken breast, egg, peri-peri, lettuce, tomato and mayo". The kitchen sink! And again, the two pieces of chicken! What is that??
To top things off, we also ordered some French fries* and some of Angelo's homemade peri-peri sauce and mayo.**
*If it hasn't been hard enough for me to start to use the term "chips" instead of "French fries", a few restaurants here actually use the latter term, which just further confuses things. It's one thing that McDonald's does this; that I can accept. But when a restaurant such as Angelo's also starts to use the term "French fries", well, that's when my head starts to spin.
**Secretly -- okay, it was no secret to any of us -- we wanted prego sauce, but we thought we should give these a try. The insane thing though is that while the fries cost $3, so did each of the sauces! That's right: the sauces cost as much as the fries. That's some wacky, wild stuff.
After ordering, we sat down and waited. And waited. And waited. And WAITED. Finally, Shorty and I got our orders. But our friend's burger was nowhere in sight. And it would stay that way for another ten minutes or so, at which point my stomach was imploding, my burger was going cold and my fries had gone soggy from the steam in the plastic bag. Faaaaaantastic.
Eventually, mercifully, our friend got his burger, we rushed back to our apartment and the true test began. But our impressions of those burgers... well, that's going to have to wait for another day. Because some events transpired just today that have brought the Portuguese Chicken Wars to a whole new level. And it absolutely requires a post of its own.
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