Red Rooster

Rating: 1

We ate dinner here in July 2024.

Pickle bruger
Chicken tenders
Fried chicken
Potato and gravy
Chips
Pineapple fritter

Driving around Western Australia the last week, we have been marvelling at the apparent fascination this nation, or at least this state, has with fried chicken. While in New Zealand KFC rules the roost unopposed, here KFC faces stiff competition from Chicken Treat and Red Rooster. From our observations, Red Rooster is the most populous. Perhaps this is an indication that it’s the best? After our experience tonight, we feel sorry for the people of Western Australia if that’s the case.

There wasn’t a single item that we tried that we could recommend. The chips were the best thing but they were still only okay. They had chicken salt, which we appreciate, and perhaps if they had been hot they might have been onto something. That goes for the rest of the meal too actually. Not a single item seemed to be fresh out of the frier. The tenders were abysmally cool and rubbery as all hell, and the chicken on the bone wasn’t much better.

The potato and gravy was welcome, in the sense that it was a break from the dryness, but the flavour was very… industrial. Similarly the pineapple fritter made a nice change, but was really sweet and again, not hot. The burger, despite being proudly announced as one of their three best, was just plain bad. It contained lukewarm chicken and ice cold salads, a daring culinary combination that didn’t turn out well. And the tomato in the burger was very pale, pink at best, white at worst.

Even though it’s hard to believe, we hated this even more than our abysmal experience at KFC. At least there the wings were good.