The Keens secret menu chicken tenders.
"There are no photos of them online, there’s not a single written word about them. I’ve used Google, I’ve asked Claude, there’s no evidence anywhere that these tenders actually exist."
Good morning, everyone.
Last night, I got dinner with J Lee at Il Posto Accanto. The highlight of the specials menu was a savory version of strawberries and cream — sweet-as-candy Campo Rosso tomatoes, stracciatella, and tiny leaves of basil layered like a parfait in a glass. If you have no plans this weekend, that’s a strong option.
If you’re looking for more weekend ideas:
The Feed Me chat is filled with weekend trips from New York City, like taking the ferry from Long Island to Connecticut for a road trip to Rhode Island, the newly-opened Pocketbook Hotel in Hudson, and a life-changing burger in Mystic.
If you’re staying in New York, I’d probably check out the jalapeño hot dogs on homemade potato buns at Elbow Bread.
And if you didn’t get tickets to one of Phoebe Bridgers’s planetarium shows, you can bring your headphones to the Museum of Natural History, go to one of their Encounters in the Milky Way shows, and DIY your own Lost Weekend experiences. 🚀🪐🌕🌑☄️🛸
Today’s newsletter includes: A Keens secret menu reveal from J Lee, Rich Man Saves a Movie Theater Story of the Week, the restaurateur building in the former Lucky Strike location wants his restaurants to bring in “generational wealth,” Alex Cooper is a CPG founder no longer, and outdoor dining is here to stay in New York.
I could never and would never gatekeep a chicken tender. By J Lee.
Expense Account is a series on Feed Me by semi-anonymous restaurant critic J Lee. He hosts a podcast with the same name. This week, he wrote about a dish I’ve long heard him whisper about: the chicken tenders at Keens.
I’ve long heard rumors of juicy golden chicken morsels in a temple somewhere in midtown. Whispers of legendary tenders in a legendary room. There are no photos of them online, there’s not a single written word about them. I’ve used Google, I’ve asked Claude, there’s no evidence anywhere that these tenders actually exist. Maybe they shouldn’t exist. But I am here to tell you that the chicken tenders at Keens do exist, and I ate them, and they are glorious.
This is not our first time breaking news of a secret menu at Keens. We were the first to tell the world about Alison Roman’s deconstructed wedge salad, dressing on the side for dipping, and a slab of thick-cut bacon, but I’d say that’s more of a menu hack than a legitimate secret menu item. Their other famous “secret menu” items are their tavern burger, and the Taste of Mutton, and neither are actually a secret. The tavern burger is delicious, it’s on their Pub Room menu, and if you ask very nicely they might serve it to you in the dining room. The Taste of Mutton is just a smaller portion of their legendary 26-ounce mutton chop (one of the iconic dishes of NYC), served with mint jelly of course. It’s featured on their lunch menu, and you can also order it for dinner. But their chicken tenders are on no menu, their name has never been written, and it’s only been uttered by those in the know. I first learned about these tenders from a famous chef in my DMs. He told me, and now I’m telling you. The secret is out. I’m sorry, but I could never and would never gatekeep a chicken tender.
“A five-year-old might enjoy a porterhouse cooked rare, just the same as a 55-year-old might enjoy an order of tenders. Keens not there to judge your pleasure, they’re there to facilitate it, and that’s what makes Keens such a fantastic and enduring restaurant.”
Keens, as you may have heard, is a New York City institution. They’ve been grilling steaks on West 36th Street since 1885. For nearly 150 years, Keens has been a favorite of presidents, athletes, robber barons, and lowly food writers like me. We all dream of adding a pipe to the collection of nearly 50,000 clay pipes displayed proudly on their ceiling. You can judge a person based on their favorite Keens potato. (Mine’s the hash brown, what does that say about me?) Nearly everything there is to say about Keen’s has already been said, but weirdly nothing has been said about their chicken tenders.
The chicken tenders at Keens are buttermilk brined, dredged in a simple batter of flour with a spattering of finely chopped parsley and chives thrown into the mix, for fun more than for flavor. They are classic, and exemplary, as is everything at Keens. They don’t do barbecue sauce, buffalo, honey mustard, they certainly don’t do sweet and sour. They’re served with a side of tartar sauce, creamy and refreshing, old school, ranch’s grandpa. These are not chicken tenders for fucking around. These are some serious tenders. They’re juicy and fried perfectly. They almost might be healthy (almost), if they weren’t served with Keens’s french fries, which are impossible to stop eating. These are tenders for the tender purist, the tender essentialist, the tender historian, who wants to eat tenders as they’d have been served a century ago, to Theodore Roosevelt and Babe Ruth and Buffalo Bill. (Even if chicken tenders weren’t actually invented until the 1970s.) Which is to say that the tenders are a bit on the bland side, but that’s OK! These are secret chicken tenders after all, and fittingly they are a bit quiet. No one will ever make the mistake of going to Keens and skipping a prime rib, a T-bone, in favor of a basket of chicken tenders. I did that, and I won’t be doing it again! (Apologies to my friend, who because of me ate chicken tenders and a Cobb salad as her first ever meal at Keens.) The tenders should be a fun little add-on to a feast, or a cheeky solo meal at the bar, with just a touch of shame.
The chicken tenders at Keens (along with a simple pasta) are their unofficial kids menu, but they’ll serve them to anyone who asks. A five-year-old might enjoy a porterhouse cooked rare, just the same as a 55-year-old might enjoy an order of tenders. Keens is not there to judge your pleasure, they’re there to facilitate it, and that’s what makes Keens such a fantastic and enduring restaurant. Their chicken tenders might not be the most exciting or flavorful chicken tenders in New York City, but when you’re eating them in a restaurant that’s been perfect for nearly a century and a half, they just might be the best chicken tenders in New York City. Put that in your pipe and smoke it.
This concludes Expense Account by J Lee.
Outdoor dining sheds are back for good in NYC. The City Council voted on Thursday to revive year-round outdoor dining, replacing the build-up-tear-down seasonal policy that was instituted three years ago, in the wake of the ad hoc approach to outdoor dining during Covid. You may not have been able to hear them, but these guys stayed up late celebrating.
Rich Man Buys a Movie Theater Story of the Week: Film producer Jack Heller bought one of Long Island’s oldest theater’s, Manhasset Cinemas in Plandome, for $3 million. He’s planning a gut renovation of the Art Deco theater, which opened in 1936. Most of my memories of Plandome, where my college boyfriend was from, are fond. I like that diner, Louie’s. Heller is also chairman of the board of directors for Southampton Playhouse, which was redeveloped by billionaire Aby Rosen last year.
Fodder for your group chat this weekend: Harvard junior Alex Bronzini-Vender says there’s “a hot new left-wing publication” whose stories are almost all AI slop.
Days after Alex Cooper’s Unwell announced a $500 million valuation, Bloomberg reported that the media company’s beverage business is closing down. Feels like just yesterday I was sitting in the audience of Deal Book, and Cooper brought a bottle of Unwell Hydration on stage to announce that she was launching the beverage in partnership with Nestlé. This news doesn’t surprise me, but I was a skeptic from day one (the creative was bad, it should’ve been a powder) and haven’t thought about the brand much since its 2024 launch.
Last night, I reached out to CPG expert Andrea Hernández (Snaxshot) to see if she had any late-night thoughts in the wake of the news. Unsurprisingly, she had several:
“I saw the writing on the wall haha, beverage category is insanely competitive. Launching a celebrity slop hydration drink alongside a controversial BigFood brand like Nestlé felt inauthentic to her. You could tell from the emerging comments when she finally announced it, her fans were underwhelmed that she only launched a beverage brand after teasing a project that felt much bigger. Though Prime is also on its last legs at this point, it’s crazy to think they’ve still outlived Unwell, I think Logan Paul’s “Youth-tube” audience at least fueled the hype in the early years of the brand because Gen Alpha saw it as an extension of being close to someone they are consuming content from, like how you stood in line for autographs for famous celebrities and bands in the older days — celebrity packaged goods, like I like to call it, are just that. However, it’s important to remember that at the end of the day, your product needs to build for scale and mainstream, so you cannot fake the product market fit, VC subsidized growth will only take you so far. Beyond taste, if you search on Reddit, a lot of people buying Unwell reported it tasting so bad, even comparing it to having a vitamin-like taste. If your product doesn’t even taste good enough for the mainstream palate, that’s another uphill battle.
At this point, it was easier to cut losses 2 years in than to let it lag any longer. Not long after their launch I had spotted them already being pushed in discounts to move off shelf, Nestlé was probably shelling money to make it move out and get some traction, at that point you’re forcing it and not really having true PMF. Changing consumer behavior away from established, trusted brands is a big endeavor. It takes more than a scandalous podcast to make the mainstream consumer connect with your product enough to incorporate it into their daily lives and make a switch from their go-to brands.
I will add, people want to make a point of it being called Unwell as a turnoff, but I don’t subscribe to that considering Liquid Death is still kicking around (even though they’ve gotten incredibly cringe).”
If you’ve wandered down Grand Street recently, you’ve probably seen the soon-to-be-open New York location of Straker’s in the former Lucky Strike address. The Telegraph spoke to London’s bad boy chef Thomas Straker about how he’s preparing (runs, saunas, monk-like abstention) for the New York location of Straker’s. Straker, who said he wants to make “generational wealth” from his restaurants, said that his London location cost him about half a million pounds, whereas the New York location has cost him “close to three and a half million dollars. I just had to raise another million to get it over the line.” On the bright side, he has Keith McNally’s blessing.
I will spend my LIRR journey this afternoon going down a Cami Clark rabbit hole. Married to Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei, dated former Google CEO Eric Schmidt, and pitched a “revolutionary porn company” to Jeffrey Epstein.
A fire on Thursday morning has shuttered Ambassadors Clubhouse (below the A24 offices) indefinitely. It happened when the buzzy new Indian restaurant was closed, and sounds like everyone is all right. But I hope they re-open soon—I like this place.
Nigel Farage won his by-election in Clacton by defeating Count Binface. Close watchers of Industry will recognize Count Binface as having also run in the Parliamentary election that Kit Harington’s character lost in the beginning of Season 4.
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College boyfriends love to be from Plandome (my college bf was also from Plandome)
I’m so interested to see how New Yorkers respond to Straker’s new restaurant