City Bird: The Best Chicken Tender Spot in Cincinnati
2021-03-01
Photo by author
My boyfriend is 25 and obsessed with chicken nuggets (and chicken in general). We eat chicken with nearly every meal, and whenever we want a quick snack or he forgets to pack lunch for work, he gets chicken nuggets.
We even went so far as to have a blind chicken nugget/chicken strip taste test with chicken from McDonald's Wendy's, Burger King, Popeye's, White Castle, KFC, Chick-fil-A, and Cane's. We determined Cane's was the best and KFC got second. If we had included City Bird, it most definitely would have won. We thought City Bird was too classy to include as fast food.
Photo by author's boyfriend
What is City Bird and what should I order?
City Bird is a local chain restaurant in the Cincinnati area. We frequent their sole Kentucky location in Crestview, but they also have restaurants in Cincinnati, Harper's Point, and Beechmont, Ohio. They primarily serve chicken tenders, but they also have salads and chicken sandwiches.
If you go alone and want all the fixings, you should expect to spend around $15. You can order all the sauces on the side if you want the full experience - we always do so every time we go.
We usually share a 10 piece tender that comes with two different sauces. They have a number of homemade sauces, including city sauce, lemon thyme ranch, jalapeno (their menu spelling) hot, hot honey, cola BBQ, and honey dijon. Our favorites are the city sauce, hot honey, and honey dijon. The jalapeno hot is like liquid jalapeños - it isn't really a great sauce, in our opinions. The cola BBQ really just tastes like a soda as intended, not very dippable. However, we still like to order the entire array of sauces for the experience. A hit of spicy jalapeños and cola every once in a while is a great thing.
If you visit, you also should try their fries. They come coated in parmesan cheese and are quite savory. Their lemonade is also top-notch.
Unique offerings
Interestingly, City Bird offers catering if you want to treat your office or host a large event. You are able to order between ten and a million tenders if you so desire. The potential is endless. You could have chicken tender catering at your wedding! I suppose it works for funerals, too.
On a different note, another unique offering is that you can run a fundraiser through City Bird. If you pick a date, time, and location, City Bird will sell their tenders there. At the end of the day, City Bird will tally up sales and mail your organization a check for 20% of the total sales within the fundraising event.
Seating arrangements
City Bird has a large amount of indoor seating with the tables spaced quite far apart. If you are comfortable with indoor dining, you would be hard-pressed to find a safer alternative. If indoor dining doesn't interest you, they also have a small patio in front of their restaurant. It is quite small and fills up quickly, but there is a Starbucks right next door with patio seating if you're comfortable sneaking over there.
Final Thoughts
City Bird is a classy way of eating chicken tenders. The tenders have been perfect every time we went and have yummy seasoning on them. I will note that they are quite salty, so if you are sensitive to salt, this may not be the place for you. If you are a person who lives and breathes chicken, you don't want to miss this place. Bring a friend to maximize your included sauces or buy your own sauce flight and try them all. We love City Bird!
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