Lucy Gellman Photo
Hamoudehand his family cut the ribbon with Upper Westville Alder Darryl Brackeen Jr. and Mayor Toni Harp.
First there was pizza. Now, there’s chicken. Crispy, crunchy chicken, with biscuits on the side.
And a few Moroccan pastries.
That’s the story in Amity, where Ziad Hamoudeh, his brother Sam Hamoudeh and wife Hanana Benas are running the city’s newest Krispy Krunchy Chicken in the Amity Road Stop & Shop Plaza. Tuesday morning marked a ribbon cutting for the restaurant, which has been open for about a month.
Hamoudeh at right in photo, with Brother Sam.
Founded in 1989, Krispy Krunchy Chicken is a national chain with around 70 Krispy Krunchy outposts in New England and more along the Northeast corridor and in the South. It began in supermarkets and convenience stores with kiosks and counters, said Krispy Krunchy Food Service Consultant Debi Schatzle Baker. She said that the company differs from competitors in making sure its meat is “always fresh, never frozen.”
Hamoudeh is running a 2,000 square-foot restaurant, where booths line the bright green walls and a backlit menu advertises dishes that have all manners of crisp and crunch. It marks his fourth venture in 27 years as a New Havener: First he opened Crown Pizza, then Westville Pizza and Amity Brick Oven Pizza, which he still runs with his brother in the same plaza.
The restaurant’s chicken and biscuits.
This restaurant opens a new culinary and entrepreneurial chapter, he said Tuesday morning before the ribbon cutting. To have the Krispy Krunchy name, he must serve the company’s meat, inject it with its “secret” marinade, and batter it in an official prepackaged mix of Krispy Krunchy breadcrumbs, salt, and spices.
Baker said that chickens cooked at the restaurant are “bigger,” at over four and a half pounds, than other chickens served in the area. That is larger than an organically raised and slaughtered chicken, for instance; the Krispy Krunchy website maintains that the meat is antibiotic- and steroid-free. The national site has more nutritional information about individual dishes, like two pieces of fried white meat with 800 calories, 48 grams of fat, and 2090 milligrams of sodium.
Ziad Hamoudeh’s cousin Nancy Peron.
The rest of the menu, Hamoudeh said, is left largely to his discretion. To options of fried chicken and buttered biscuits (also Krispy Krunchy sanctioned), he has added an array of panini and fresh salads, as well as fried and pastry-wrapped seafood and cases of Italian and Moroccan cookies, dripping with honey, chocolate, sprinkles and powdered sugar. Per Krispy Krunchy’s rules, he has contracted with City Fish, a Connecticut business.
“It’s totally different than what I used to own before,” he said. “This chicken, it’s very popular, it’s very delicious. It has favor inside of it no one else has.”
Some of the pastry-wrapped seafood.
At the opening, New Haven Mayor Toni Harp lauded Hamoudeh for adding a new small and family-run business to the plaza.
“We can honestly say that he has helped to make us the number one foodie city in Connecticut, if not America,” she said. “It’s really important to me that we have people who want to invest in places like this. We’ve seen a lot of open shops here, so on behalf of the people of Westville … thank you for investing here, and thank you for giving us something really good to eat.”
Krispy Krunch General Manager Alvis Shaw said that this is the first of several outlets he’s anticipating in the area. He said that he is “looking” to expand downtown, then into Fair Haven, along I‑95’s rest stop areas.