When you enter the doors of Butter in Sydney’s Surry Hills, a cacophony of jerseys, sneakers, basketballs – as well as the distant smell of fried chicken – fill out the fluorescent, blue-lit room.
It’s small, with a tight kitchen in the back. You can just see the fryers and prep-tables through the chef’s pass behind the boxy bar that’s styled with a red fluorescent-light that reads: Hennessy.
Videos by VICE
Julian Cincotta, owner and chef, meets us at the door, smoking a cigarette on the footpath. It’s been a big few weeks and he’s been busy. Between the catering they do around Sydney, as well as the attempts to licence the upstairs venue to use as a space for parties, he’s been trying to find a couple of days off. He hasn’t succeeded yet.
We’re here because Butter has famously become known in Sydney for its fried chicken. I’ve tried it (mostly when I’ve been drunk at the various parties and shows that they supply to) but it’s good. Just what the doctor ordered when trying to soak up alcohol in the system.
“So Butter is fried chicken, hip hop, champagne and sneakers,” says Cincotta.
“Me and my business partners, it’s all our loves. We’re seven years old now. People thought we were gimmicky at the start, ‘they sell chicken and champagne’, but our whole thing was street meets luxury, that kind of opulence but matched with humble fried chicken.”
Butter, he says, does a lot of work with local artists as well as international ones. Two weeks after they opened, Wu Tang Clan – RZA, Ghostface Killer and Raekwon – to Julian’s surprise, graced the 40-seat restaurant. From there, ASAP Ferg, Post Malone, Kaytranada and other international acts started coming in. Recently, Cincotta was snapped with Yung Gravy as he handed him a box of Butter fried chicken. I notice a shoe box signed by OneFour on a shelf above eye-level.
“In the first year Post Malone came out. He just came in and sat here and he’s like, ‘Man, thankyou so much. That chicken was amazing,’ says Cincotta.
“Ferg was the same. He literally came five times, everyday that week and was like, ‘I love your chicken, you need this over in the states’. He even wrote a song about us.”
Praise from big stars aside, what they really wanted to do, he says, is connect with the local community.
“We’ve been doing a local artist series. We’re done meals with Aussie favourites like Horrorshow, A.Girl, Chillinit, Sydney Youngins, and we’ve got Lara Andalo and Mason Dane coming up. We’ve been throwing a lot of events, we’re doing one for Pride month. So we love that more,” he says.
“Hopefully we get to 10 years and stand the test of time.”
Now for the recipe.
THE CHICKEN
Like any restaurant, trade secrets cannot be divulged yet Julian has a few tips and tricks we can publish.
It starts with the raw chicken:
Julian: “So we’ll start with our fried chicken tenders: it’s the most succulent piece. I don’t use the breast, I use this. I think a really big thing about our fried chicken is that we have amazing fryers. I cook chicken like a steak, cook it, let it rest. There’s nothing worse than dry chicken. Don’t show this bit.
VICE: “What’s this?”
“This is our [redacted]. Don’t put that in, get this one [points to secret herbs and spices blend]”
[Dips chicken in [redacted] and then in spice blend]
Then these are our wings, and we score them just so they cook through so we don’t need to cook them as long. These ones actually just get this [the spices]. Then, very controversial, people like breast or they like thigh on their chicken sandwiches. I like a thigh.
We get our chicken from La Ionica in Melbourne. It doesn’t see bleaching after, so it is very dry, it has a bit of bite to it and it actually tastes like chicken. It doesn’t taste like mush water.
Well, I mean, that’s good.
Alrighty. So these are our secret herbs and spices.
So who came up with these secrets?
It was me. Basically, my chicken’s a bastard recipe. Not all fried chickens are equal. You can’t rate a Korean fried chicken to an American to a Chinese to a Japanese. They’re all different. I hate people that rate fried chicken places and they’re all different cuisines ‘cause they aren’t all the same. This is a little bit of everything that I’ve put together. A lot of people know that it is unique, when you taste other stuff, different coatings, mine’s a little bit more batter-y, more crispy.
[puts chicken in fryer]
I was in Kuala Lumpur at this place called Line Clear, with this guy dressed up as Elvis and he had this big wok and he had all of this fried chicken and was mixing it in. And he was going through all the spices that were American influenced with the cayenne peppers, mustards which is a very big southern thing, I’ve thrown a little bit in this cause we used to have a restaurant where we did Lebanese fried chicken so it had middle eastern spices – cumin, coriander – it just elevates it.
Basically, I literally just threw some shit together and it worked really good [laughs].
Can I try? [picks up one piece of chicken]
Do all three. Time is money, you know [laughs]. Put it in there, shake, grab ‘em out, dust them and throw it in [to the fryer].
[chicken fries for a few minutes]
[takes chicken out]
Alright, we have to let it rest for about a minute. The oil on the outside gets a bit crispier and you don’t want to eat boiling hot fried chicken either. So these are the little things we try to do.
[Places three wings on serving dish]
We break the knuckles of the wings, ‘cause the worst thing is that when you’re ordering fried chicken you want that crunch. When you get a wing that’s not broken and you pull it off all the crust falls off.
[Places tenders on plate. Puts them to the side]
So our fried chicken sandwich. This is our classic chicken and cheese. A steamed bun, soft to add different texture sensations. Honey mustard sauce [on both buns]. Crispy iceberg lettuce… Iceberg lettuce is the most underrated lettuce, the cheapest and the tastiest. Then add double cheese, fried chicken.
[puts bun on top].
And then the chips. So we also have our Butter’s hot sauce, it’s a three-month fermented hot sauce and then a three-month aged hot sauce. My business partner’s cousin is the fermentalist. So he makes it. It’s fermented for three months and then all the seed and pulp comes out. That all gets dried and then we make that into a spice to use on other things.
THE DRINK
[Goes behind bar]
This is just a Hennessy and fresh apple juice. The doctor said eat an apple a day, you may as well drink it with booze.
[one shot of Hennessy, the rest freshly juiced apples]
TASTE TIME
Not going to lie. This fried chicken was as good as I remembered it. Hot, soft and succulent on the inside and crispy on the outside. The chicken and cheese burger was a gourmet iteration of Mcdonald’s cheap, lopsided mess of a sandwich and yep, the crispy skin definitely didn’t fall off the wings thanks to the broken bones.
Though I’m no food critic (thank god), I believe the menu to be simple –with a few hidden intricacies – filling, and overarchingly, fucking good. The undercurrent of community loyalty and support – especially to Sydney’s music community – also left a good taste in the mouth.
As we were leaving, filled with Hennessy, apples and chicken I can safely say I thought I was going to vomit from eating too much. I didn’t. But I’ll definitely be back again.
Follow Julie Fenwick on Twitter and Instagram.
Read more from VICE Australia and subscribe to our weekly newsletter, This Week Online.
