Joella's Hot Chicken - Indianapolis — Restaurant in Indianapolis

Visited the Ripple location that just opened. That may be a factor, but I doubt it. Going to star each component of my visit below as X/5 so you get an idea my thoughts, if they even matter on another internet review

Price 2/5 Tenders 1/5 Tweener Sauce 3/5 Fire in the Hole Sauce 3/5 Mac and Cheese 2/5 Collard Greens 4/5 Buying Experience 1/5

I will break each one of those points down after I note my ordering/paying experience, which was perhaps the biggest factor in my less than stellar review.

First the setup. I ordered online. That's cool. Was a bit miffed to see the tender meal say "Tenders with 2 sides starting at 8.50" only to find out that the 2nd side forces you to pay an extra dollar. The in-house menu says Tenders w/ 1 side for 8.50, 2 sides for 9.50. They need to change their online wording because I felt a bit cheated by the expectations vs. reality.

After I ordered, I was given a message that said expected time for order to be ready would be about 7 minutes later. That was fast. So I went to the store a couple blocks away.

Parking lot was a nightmare. Not their fault. But when I got inside, I had to wait in a long line (about 10 minutes) to get to pickup my order. The bag my food was in was on the counter when I got to the store (I noted they had their pickups on the counter in behind the registers, and the bag the cashier grabbed was there when I walked in).

Was a little frustrated that I had to wait behind other customers who had yet to order their food to pickup an order I placed prior. They definitely need to work on that aspect (as that might have a lot to do with the perception of their food).

Now the breakdown.

Price 2/5: I ordered the tenders w/ 2 sides as noted above. That was 9.50. I also added another tender cuz fatboi gotta eat. That added 2.50, which definitely seemed pricey, but whatever. I smoked a bit and fatboi gotta eat.

The total was 13.08 for 4 tenders of average size, 2 small sides, a piece of bread, bleu cheese dip, and a pickle slice. Given the factors below, I'd say the meal was worth no more than 8 bucks. 4 tenders for a meal is pretty standard, especially when each tender is about 3" long by 1.5" in diameter.

Tenders 1/5: They were soggy, very tough, and definitely had some delicious tendons on them. The texture indicated decent quality chicken, but the mouthfeel was terrible. It tasted and felt like I was eating tenders I had ordered the night before then nuked in the microwave for 3 minutes the next day.

The taste was okay. Nothing special. The sauce carries the flavor. The chicken was too dry and average on its own I think. I would rather take some of their sauce to go then get some crappy tenders at McDonald's next door. Would have saved me several dollars and the tenders at McDonald's are at least as good as Joella's in terms of quality and texture.

Standard "par-fried" frozen Tyson type tenders you could get at BWWs, but they cooked them too long or nuked them or served me yesterday's tenders since I ordered online or something. Not impressed. Blah. No thanks.

Tweener Sauce 3/5: Tasted okay. Nothing special. Only thing that made the chicken tolerable. Just your standard Frank's Hot Sauce styled sauce.

Fire in the Hole Sauce 3/5: Decided to get a side of this because I like to see what any given place will determine is hot. I heard they make you sign a waiver to order it. Can't confirm.

It was okay. Pretty spicy, but nothing the Thai place across the street couldn't run circles around. The spice was as hot as I would have expected, just a bit below BWW's "Blazin" style. What I did like was that the sauce had a decent flavor. Most places try to make a hot sauce that ends up tasting like pepper and dirt. This had something else in it to give it some charisma. Kudos.

Mac and Cheese 2/5: Tasted like standard velveeta styled mac. Tasted like it was made the night before and nuked before being served. Tasted almost exactly like KFC's mac. Nothing special.

I reached the text limit. I think I...

I am going to preface this review by saying I am one month post a trip to Nashville where I had the original Prince's Hot Chicken, which was amazing.

Joella's offers hot chicken, regular fried chicken, along with a number of side offerings and even waffles. I kept it simple. I ordered the Quarter White at Tweener, which is medium heat with a side of Crispy-Thin Fries. Others in my group ordered the Quarter White with Fire-in Da Hole Inferno Heat (the hottest), Chicken Tenders (tweener heat) along with mac and cheese, both types of cole slaw and the parm garlic fries.

I'll start with my food. One of the best things about any fried chicken to me is the crunchy breading. With hot chicken this is even more important, as that's where all the flavor is. While Joella's chicken has a decent flavor, I didn't feel I could really enjoy it. My chicken had little to no breading/crunch. Instead, it just had a bunch of slimy soggy skin. Without the flavorful crunchy breading, I might as well have been eating a plain chicken breast, as I am not going to eat a bunch of chicken skin. The flavor tastes like a lot of spices put together rather than a fluid flavor. It is quite greasy. The heat was right in the middle, as advertised. The fries were average if not bad. I am not sure why they would choose this sort of fry to sell with chicken. It's indeed thin and crispy, fried hard and has little to no potato "meatiness" for lack of better word. I could have definitely skipped these.

Two people in my party who ordered shortly after me sat for a while and noticed others who came after us getting food. This went on for a while until they decided to go ask. At the same moment an employee started walking over and said they'd forgotten about their order and would start it immediately. Overall service wasn't anything to write home about. Not rude but little interaction or talking with customers.

I ended up trying the Inferno heat chicken. It is HOT but edible. It left my mouth and lips burning but I still found it enjoyable. The chicken ordered with the inferno heat was MUCH crispier and tasted more like what I imagined mine should have been like. I actually ate more of this than my own. The garlic parm fries were better than the crispy thin fries but still pretty average. Finally there were the chicken tenders, which I'd say were the worst. They seemed enhanced. They had that rubbery bounciness to them that drives me nuts. I took a bite and wanted no more. The chicken tenders also hardly had breading, so no crunch but rather just covered in the spices. Everyone at the table agree they were the worst thing we ordered. I didn't try any of the sides my group ordered but they seemed to enjoy them all.

I wanted to love this place as I fell head over heels for Prince's Hot Chicken and was hoping Indy would have a spot that I could feed that craving. Unfortunately, I...

We decided to try this place from the Suhoor fest as we did not get a chance to try this during that so we decided to try it out here on 96th Street. However, recent experience to Joellas hot chicken was not good. We decided to try it for the very first time and the spice levels we ordered for the chicken tenders were very tasty. However, the person serving us named Angelo was horrible, he clearly does not care about his customers and more busy to head home, I should have known since he has an airpod in one ear and working at the same time. He was rude, rushing us and also making us feel unwelcome.

We tried a few chicken tenders and they were very tasty, I decided to also try 'Fire in da hole' but I was not even given a waiver before trying it (this was something I had researched before hand) I also did not expect the spice level to be so much, although later finding out it was made from 'Carolina reaper'. The whole experience could have been a lot better and the sad part was that the restaurant was not even busy at the time of entering, so there was no excuse for bad service. The other servers were very welcoming and nice to us both, however Angelo was rude and obnoxious especially to my wife? He is very lucky I stayed calm during the whole experience, but learn to treat a lady with respect.

Definitely not coming back to this one again, however overall the other food selections were very tasty. The Ghost pepper...