Lunch: Buffalo wings (w/ranch dipping sauce), potato salad, toast, lemonade
Slim Chickens is by far my favorite of the chicken finger chains (places like Raising Cane's and Zaxby's). It has nothing to do with the fact they have the coolest name in all of fast food, nor that they have the creepiest logo...
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| Eat me, bitches |
The reason I love Slim's is their wings. There's 11 sauce options to have them cooked in and they're all great (my favorite is Korean BBQ) and 17 dipping sauce options to go with them. You can even have your tenders tossed in the wing sauces for more flavor, though they’ll be wet. I’m not a big tenders fan, but I’ll do the sauced tenders here anytime. At least when I'm not in the mood for wings. (HINT: I am never not in the mood for wings.)
The second reason is their abundance of sides, including a macaroni and cheese that's actually edible and a potato salad that tastes of dill and bacon. It is one of my all-time favorite potato salads.
Then there's the dessert jars. Real glass Mason jars full of yummy. The year-round one has a mix of brownie, pudding, whipped cream, and Heath bar pieces. It's just incredible. The seasonal Strawberry Cheesecake one is also amazing. Plus you get to keep the jar.
And don’t pass up the lemonade. Not too tart or too sweet. Pretty smooth lemonade.
They have a chicken sandwich on the menu too, but it's not your mom's beloved Chick-Fil-A. It has a cayenne seasoning and is dressed with cayenne ranch sauce, plus pickles, lettuce, and onion strings. It's nasty in the best possible way.
There's also wraps and optional grilled strips. Plan on about a half dozen lunches there to really wrap your brain around the whole thing. And even then you won't have gotten through all the options, but you'll be hooked so it won't matter.
The Slim's I'm having lunch at is in a new shopping development I now stay at a lot, right next door to my hotel. Also within walking distance is a shiny new multiplex with a large format auditorium called "ScreenX". And last night, I watched my first ScreenX feature, The Meg.
A ScreenX auditorium looks pretty normal when you walk in and get seated in your luxury leather recliner with butt warmer. It looks pretty normal when the movie starts. The technology isn't used throughout the feature...it's scene-specific. But when it kicks on the first time, there's a 'wow' factor.
What happens is suddenly the image widens down the auditorium side walls. The ENTIRE SIDE WALLS all the way to the back of the auditorium. The trick is achieved using a network of projectors corner mounted at the top of the wall. They're not stretching, it's expanded footage. It was used a lot for the underwater action scenes in The Meg. Trippy, man. I tend to sit close to the screen...third or fourth row...but in this situation, sitting further back might be more rewarding.
I think it's kind of gimmicky, and it's far from perfect. There are black lines down the corners of the front of the room. The surround speakers poke out of the image like aircraft windows. And the side wall image quality isn't always up to snuff with the main front image. Plus those side images aren't meant to be seen by the human eye jutting around a corner.
So...interesting, but not really revolutionary. Maybe one day we'll have globe-shaped auditoriums where the image can be all the way around and above us, so you really feel like you're looking around at a universe.
There are few ScreenX auditoriums in the US currently and few movies that support the technology. But if the opportunity arises, check it out. You're not going to want to pay the premium ticket price for every movie this way, but for the occasional big dumb blockbuster, maybe give it a whirl.
