Hybird (CLOSED!!!)

75 Ninth Avenue

(Chelsea Market)

www.hybirdnyc.com

Directly across from Los Tacos No. 1, is Questlove’s fried chicken and dumpling food stand.

Who is Questlove? Questlove (spelled “?uestlove”) is the leader of the musical band The Roots. Who are The Roots? The Roots are the house band for Jimmy Fallon’s Late Night show, and they are awesome!

The food stand features innovative branding—it just looks like a ton of fun with the endlessly changing bright colors, and I’m also digging the question marks.

I even like the footprints that indicate where you need to stand to order or wait to order your food. It’s whimsical and silly and light-hearted.

As I already had my take-out tacos from Los Tacos, I decided to just order one drumstick for $2.

I think they focus on drumsticks (as opposed to any other part of the chicken) in honor of the fact that Questlove is a drummer.

The staff is super-nice and really friendly. They even let me have one of their super-cool bags with my take-out order, even though my order was only $2. Major bonus points!!!

As I noted, Hybird is great at branding. From the take-out box:

To even the tissue paper that lines the take-out box!

Now, onto my review of the food: I LOVE fried chicken and the drumstick has always been my favorite part of the chicken. I always rate it according to the crunch of skin and how much meat is on the drumstick.  The skin was crispy, but light and easy to chew. The drumstick I had was juicy with a lot of meat on the bone. So I was very pleased.

On a scale of 1 to 10, I’d rate it a solid 8. Though I really do need to eat more than one piece to determine the continuity of the cooking. You can always eat one perfectly cooked piece of fried chicken and the next piece could be raw.

So look forward to going back and ordering a few more pieces of friend chicken, along with a watermelon jalapeño Love Slush. Not sure about the dumplings, but who knows I might get a craving for the truffled egg dumpling—sounds decadent!