Prepare your bodies: Shaq's "Big Chicken" confirmed for Tallahassee
Fowl of Foodies: Shaq Ops
Big Chicken, the restaurant brought forth unto the world by the legendary Shaquille O’Neal that has fed the likes of California beaches, arenas, and even Carnival cruise lines, is now officially coming to the Florida panhandle.
Chris and Amy McMillan, of the Panhandle Restaurant Group, are currently working on its first Big Chicken location in Panama City, with a reported one or two Tallahassee locations coming sometime within the next year.
My neighbors in town wondering what they can expect can check out the menu online (though no guarantee it will be exactly the same), and be pleasantly surprised by the amount of heart that went into what could have very easily just been a fast-casual joke for a quick buck, with an array of chicken sandwiches, sliders, and house-made coleslaw and sauces.
Other chicken sandwich items include the "Shaq Attack," made with pepper jack cheese, jalapeño slaw and spicy chipotle barbecue sauce. The "Uncle Jerome" features Nashville hot chicken, lettuce, mayo and pickles.
An interview with Restaurant Business details the process O’Neal underwent to craft the flavor of his dreams:
When he came up with the concept for Big Chicken, Shaquille O’Neal recruited two of Las Vegas’ leading chefs, Matt Silverman and Matt Piekarski, to create a menu reflective of his Southern roots. That meant turning some of Shaq’s family favorites into brand signatures and developing their own versions of top sellers, like milkshakes and fries.
Lucille’s Mac and Cheese, Shaq’s mother’s recipe with its Cheez-It crust, was a menu must-have, but it took some R&D to scale up.
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The cole slaw is also made in house and the six sauces—led by the Shaq Sauce, a creamy barbecue sauce—are all proprietary. The chefs worked with a supplier to perfect the sauces for volume operation.
But there’s plenty of non-savory options too, like oversized milkshakes in mason jars (the "Diesel"), a cookie the size of an actual basketball, and even wine and beer for the grownups.
I wish the time frame for when we can expect the Tallahassee location to open was more definitive than “sometime in 2023,” but you can bet that as soon as I hear word about when we can all try some Cheez-It mac and cheese, you’ll be the first to know.
As far as “food crimes” go, I was pleasantly surprised to see that Big Chicken really does seem to love the food they’re making. Do you know of any more inflammatory “food crimes” in Tallahassee we should know about? Drop a comment below.