Who needs Kentucky when you have Karnataka? Recently, renowned actor and food journalist Kunal Vijayakar posted about the latest episode of his show, ‘Khane Mein Kya Hai’, where he’s taken off to the suburbs of 'Namma Bengaluru' to try out the famous Gowda Fried Chicken, the big GFC itself.
Gowda Fried Chicken is a speciality of Bengaluru and today can be found all over the city and beyond, but it all began in a little eatery off Mysore Road. For 35 years, Krishnappa Gowda ran a vegetarian eatery but faced a litany of problems with business and workers. Finally, over a decade ago, he decided to call it quits and opened a new restaurant that honours his Gowda heritage and his Mandya roots. The Gowda community from the northeast of Karnataka are traditionally agrarian and they cook with what they grow. Krishnappa took that ethos and vowed to make clean, simple food with unadulterated fresh ingredients, and that was the beginning of the famous GFC.
Video Credits: Khaane Mein Kya Hai/Instagram
The signature chicken kevab is made with a few basic ingredients. The GFC spice mix consists of 26 pure, secret spices (no preservatives!), ginger garlic paste and a little water to make it into a marinade paste. He uses chickens that are 1.2 kilos or less because he believes that they yield the most tender meat. Once the chicken is marinating it can be left for up to 36 hours to really let that flavour seep in before it’s deep fried in hot oil and served alongside their signature biryani.
Unlike many chefs, Gowda didn’t gatekeep his speciality, he openly provided the spice for any partner restaurants who wanted to bear the GFC name and even shares the recipe for the chicken itself in a cookbook. An astute businessman, today Krishnappa has over 238 branches across South Indian which serve their signature chicken and have sold over 1 lakh recipe books sharing this Mandya speciality with the world. Gowda wasted no time though and today they have a range of spice powders besides the famous chicken masala. Everything from kebab masala, biryani spices to an all-purpose garam masala, all proudly bearing the GFC name.
His reasoning is that if people want fried chicken, whether at home or at one of his shops, he will be there to provide it, either by serving them at the restaurant or giving them spice powders and teaching them how to make it themselves. His main priority is that everyone has access to GFC whenever they want it, and he’s very sure that once you taste his chicken, you’ll never look back.