Chicken Shack: The Brownie Must Get Through

Brownie Basics

WordPress notified me of a few milestones this blog recently reached, which also made me realise I’ve been a little lax on the brownie front recently, so I decided to order a Saturday night takeaway from somewhere that would give me a brownie.

Brownie Backstory

Lockdown has changed my eating habits a lot, possibly for the better. One key difference is obviously that I used to travel around the country for work, which would generally mean 3-4 takeaway meals a week, and that’s no longer the case. Admittedly there were a couple of weeks in lockdown where I ate at least three takeaway meals but y’know… that’s different.

Getting three dinners from takeaways a week – for free as well, thanks to the magic of expenses – changes how you see takeaways. And to be clear, these are takeaways in the sense that they’re restaurant food from restaurants which deliver (or are on Deliveroo) and I’m not talking solely about kebabs, fish & chips, etc. It might not be the healthiest lifestyle but it could be worse. The point I’m making is that when your dinners are usually takeaways, your takeaways start becoming just standard dinners. It stops feeling weird to buy something on Deliveroo which you could cook at home: you’re not wasting money because it’s free!

This is no longer the case. I still order the odd takeaway – probably looking at something like a once-a-week takeaway now, as a treat – but I’ll prioritise things I couldn’t or wouldn’t be cooking at home, because that’s once again become the majority of what I eat. This is a very long-winded way to say that this takeaway was a posh chicken burger and chips. Plus, and this shouldn’t shock you, a brownie.

The brownie in question was salted caramel: a standard chocolate brownie was also on offer, but caramel tends to make brownies even more delicious, so I decided to give Chicken Shack the benefit of the doubt (sort of? Or give them an advantage? Whatever) by ordering the salted caramel.

I tried to find out more about Chicken Shack, but it doesn’t appear to exist as an actual restaurant, so much as just a Deliveroo kitchen somewhere. Nonetheless it successfully delivered delicious chicken and delicious chips, so does the brownie make it go three for three?

Brownie Points

Taste: If this caramel is salted, it’s very subtly so, and that’s how I like it. It’s a darn good taste all the way through with a nice interplay of the sweeter caramel with the richer chocolate. 8/10

Texture: I really like the texture of most of this brownie, but it is slightly let down by a dry and crumbly edge. Just missing out on the higher score: 7/10

Presentation: It’s pretty standard-looking, but that’s not in a bad way. It has that nice cut and a cross-section of a caramel lump. 3/5

Value: This was £3.50. That is… amazingly cheap for a restaurant brownie, which I’d usually assume would be more in the £6 range. Maybe this is because it’s relatively simple and not covered in sauce and ice-cream? But I think that’s 100% to its credit! It gets a sizeable 9/10

Fudge Factor: An extra couple of points for a place which just does fried chicken (and grilled chicken, which I ordered, because health) having a surprisingly great brownie. 2/5

Shack Up: 29

Should I Buy And Eat This Brownie?

I would whole-heartedly recommend this brownie if you’re ordering delicious chicken from Chicken Shack.

Closing Thoughts

So WordPress let me know that this blog recently hit a few key milestones at about the same time! (It was more recent when I started writing this post, oops). The blog recently had its first birthday, it’s now surpassed 300 followers (thank you followers!) and this is post number 75, which is a multiple of 5 so I’ll count it as a milestone.

I originally intended to make this post a bit different as part of that number 75 celebration, but then ordered and ate this brownie so I’ll be pushing that to a later post. For now, more brownies await!