With my roommate’s brother moving in on Washington Avenue on the border of Prospect Heights and Crown Heights (and, incidentally, my roommate moving out – CRAP), I took the opportunity of a stroll up and down the nearby Vanderbilt Avenue strip. While there aren’t many cheap eats kinda places there (the theme of the strip seems to have skipped from nothing to upscale bistro in a few shakes of a lamb’s tail), at least one is worthy of consideration: Mitchell’s, located between Bergen and St. Marks.
Mitchell’s is another of the fried chicken places covered in the VV article that introduced me to Ruthie’s, but I have to say that the chicken probably isn’t as good as that hallowed establishment. Not that the cooking technique and skin aren’t great – the actual base of the chicken is just dryer than it needs to be. I tried yam and collards for sides, and while the collards may be a bit better than Ruthie’s by virtue of their moist-ness, nobody beats her yams as yet.
That said, a thigh-leg and two sides portion of food is only $7, and, if you stop in on a Sunday, as I did, you can watch football on the TV in the corner (choose seat strategically, if possible, otherwise a thick Plexiglas partition will blur your view) with a local clergyman and his family. God bless the fresh fried bird, and may it always triumph over the red devil KFC.
Twenty Bucks A Day 