Fried chicken is hard to come by in this city. You can't swing a dead cat without hitting a derivative sushi/wrap/shawarma joint, but serving up some unapologetically fried chicken seems beyond the capabilities of our grab-and-go restaurateurs. Along with BBQ and decent Mexican food, fried chicken forms the (mostly) absent troika of revered calorie-packed cooking. Done right, it's the perfect take-out food: cheap, satisfying, and surprisingly difficult to replicate at home. Fortunately, Poulet Bronzé comes close to getting it right.

Poulet Bronzé's menu is simple. Fried chicken, and some other stuff that doesn't really matter because, well, they have fried chicken. It comes in a basket on parchment paper. Regular or spicy. You can get a whole bucket of it if you want. They even deliver. And it's open very late. Like, 2 am late. The woman who runs the place is as gruff and dismissive as you'd want her to be, and there are no annoying pseudo-Southern trappings to ruin the whole thing.

The chicken is crispy and moist, and unlike at KFC, there's a decent chance that the meat here came off a real bird. The chicken is halal, which fills me with hope that I'm not eating steroid filled laboratory meat (although my hope may be in vain).

The biggest drawback is the lack of proper sides. No greens, no beans, no corn. The salads are disappointing: neon-green slaw, mayonnaise-heavy potato salad, and pitiable macaroni. The fries are great, but it'd be nice to have the option of ordering mashed potatoes. But yeah, sure: Montreal has fried chicken.

Poulet Bronzé
514-989-8555
1622 av Lincoln (just West of Guy)
Montréal,