Mrs. Knott's Chicken Dinner

The last Saturday of July, my husband's company had a picnic at Knott's Berry Farm, which included a full meal and discounted ticket into the park. I was pretty excited because I'd never been there. And franchement (frankly), I was really excited about the chicken. Forget the crazy roller coasters.

Here in Southern California, this chicken, whose recipe is now 77 years old, gets a lot of hype. People line up out the door for hours to get a table on a weekend. So that's what we did. And this was after I already tasted one form of the chicken at the picnic.

Yes, we went to the restaurant for dinner, after already having it for lunch. Don't judge. The chicken at lunch was not fresh. It wasn't the real deal. It had been sitting in a steamer tray and wasn't a very good representative. I needed to have the Chicken Dinner Restaurant experience. So we indulged.

This is the lighter side chicken dinner. Leg and thigh, cherry rhubarb (not pictured), mashed potatoes and gravy, cabbage and ham, and biscuits. The full meal had even more chicken and more sides (yikes!). The chicken was good: tasty, crispy on the outside, juicy on the inside. It was good. I liked it a lot. Better than lunch but nothing too extraordinary either. Extraordinary were the biscuits! Small, but buttery, soft and fluffy. I had three. and a half. with boysenberry jam. Oh yeah. I'll be back for the biscuits.

All that said, the most amazing thing about this restaurant had to be how crazy big it was. The place went on and on and on.

Someone was having a birthday party in the room we were in. Heck yes! I'm 98.5% sure I'll be stealing that idea for my next birthday. You're all invited. If you're lucky there will be a princess cake too.