Shaq brings his Big Chicken chain to Philadelphia. It’s big, all right — including a cookie the size of a basketball.
Former NBA star Shaquille O'Neal is behind a growing chain of chicken shops, now at the Comcast Center.
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Big Chicken, the fast-casual eatery backed by former NBA star Shaquille O’Neal, has joined the lineup at the Concourse at Comcast Center, the food hall beneath Comcast’s headquarters at 1701 JFK Blvd.
It’s in the space briefly occupied by Top Chef Quickfire, which had barely opened before the 2020 pandemic shutdown. You can’t miss it — there’s a 7-foot-1 cardboard cutout of a grinning O’Neal standing in front.
O’Neal and partners launched Big Chicken in Las Vegas in 2018, and its creation was chronicled in a Facebook reality series called Big Chicken Shaq. The chain has 18 open locations across the country, including six sports arenas, one airport terminal, and three Carnival Cruise ships.
It opened Thursday with a slightly abbreviated menu — four chicken sandwiches, a chicken-topped Caesar salad, popcorn chicken, fries, jalapeño slaw, four milkshakes made with hormone-free milk, soft drinks, and a chocolate-chip cookie that is 9 inches in diameter, the same as a basketball. (“Why is the cookie $12.99?” a guy asked his buddy as they gazed up at the menu Thursday. The friend pointed to the cookie, wrapped in plastic, and the first guy nodded.) By default, all the chicken is fried, though they will grill it upon request.
How’s the food at Big Chicken?
Big, all right. Portions are larger than at most chains. The M.D.E. sandwich (after one of Shaq’s nicknames, Most Dominant Ever) and the Uncle Jerome (Nashville hot chicken) had impressive chicken quality, crunchy, medium breading, and a tasty brioche roll that gamely held the generous ingredients without falling apart like the Magic in the 1995 NBA Finals.
At $8.99 for the M.D.E. and $9.99 for the Uncle Jerome, they were good values. Popcorn chicken ($8.99 for “big,” $11.99 for “bigger”) had proper crunch. Of the excellent sauces, my favorite was the Shaq sauce, which tasted like Chick-fil-A’s sauce but with an extra kick, perhaps a dash of Liquid Smoke or Worcestershire.
Fries ($3.49), however, were lacking. They’re sliced lengthwise, like flat steak fries. Delicious when hot out of the fryer, they became totally unremarkable shortly thereafter. The Diesel shake (Oreo cookie, and priced like the others at $6.29) was properly rich. The cookie? A slam-dunk.
Hours are 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. weekdays.