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When a new spot opens in town, we can’t wait to check it out — and let you know our initial impressions, share a few photos, and dish about some menu items. First Taste, as the name implies, is not a full-blown review, but instead a peek inside restaurants that have just opened, sampling a few items, and satisfying curiosities (yours and ours).
Restaurant: Bad Mother Cluckers Location: 26 East University Drive, Tempe Open: Just over a week. Eats: Rotisserie chicken. Price: Between $5 and $15 per person.
See also: Chicken Restaurant With Best/Worst Name of 2012 Coming to Tempe
What’s so bad about Bad Mother Cluckers (BMC)? Not much. And that’s a good thing.
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The late-night, fowl-filled eatery in Tempe’s Mill Avenue District opened at the end of August in a once-abandoned building just off Mill Avenue. And its laser-focused menu of cheap chicken and beer served up in a newly remodeled, sprawling space complete with patio seems tailor-made for ASU students looking to snack and suds it pre- or post-game time.
For eats, there is chicken. And that is all. You can order it up as a whole, half, or quarter meal with fries and a salad, or as a barbecue sandwich or lettuce wrap.
The quarter chicken meal with fries and a salad is better than you might have thought a quarter chicken meal with fries and a salad for $5.50 would ever be. The charcoal-fire rotisserie chicken — moist, lightly seasoned, and touched with a bit of lemon — is surprisingly flavorful for the price. An accompanying simple salad and handful of thick fries with a spicy mayo sauce probably aren’t going to blow your hair back, but they’re tasty just the same. And bonus, you can gobble the whole thing down between swigs of two-buck beers and still eat for under ten bucks.
BMC’s space is simple yet pleasant. A sprawling room with track lighting, TV’s, and lots of tables and chairs — a bit like a dressed-up cafeteria of sorts. The counter service is fast and efficient and there’s usually a beer special to be taken advantage of. Currently, it’s $1.50 Corona and Corona Lights all day long.
A comfortable space and decent grub for cash-strapped ASU students makes Bad Mother Cluckers a satisfying, non-chain addition to Tempe. One that you can write home to mom and dad about and tell them you’re getting fed for cheap, without the trappings of fast food, and not to worry so much.
Here’s the menu:
