Vickki Dozier

Lansing State Journal

LANSING - It's lunchtime, and there’s a line at the counter at Eastside Fish Fry & Grill. Customers are sitting, lined up along the wall. Almost everyone is there for the same reason.

The customers call it “crack chicken.” The owner, Henry Meyer, does not, and he has his reasons. But he will say it's just this side of addictive.

“It’s the seasoning,” said Greg Bogan, who was waiting on his order. “The chicken wings are addictive.”

Bogan usually gets the chicken wings. That day, he was picking up wings for his wife, catfish nuggets for himself.

“I call them crack wings,” he said. “They’re tasty, and they seem to be cooked just right.”

"Crack chicken" isn't a precise term. Any sort of chicken that tastes so good you want to go right back up to the counter and order more might qualify. But it usually means wings with a special seasoning mixed into the flour and sprinkled on top.

And, in Lansing, the only places you can find it are fish fry spots.

Meyer's store isn't the one that has a big sign out front that says "crack chicken" over a drawing of a hatching yellow chick. That store belongs to Wayne Haddad, a co-owner of Fresh Fish & Fry on Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard.

Crack chicken is, quite literally, their trademark. They registered the name with the United States Patent and Trademark Office last month.

"We opened in 2003 and about four years after we opened, a gentleman by the name of Joe Walker wrote an article and he is the one who called it crack chicken," Haddad said. "He said it tasted so good you can't stop eating it."

Over the years, Haddad said, the name has become popular and customers kept repeating it. If you Google "crack chicken," he said, it will give you their address.

Haddad says people call it crack chicken because of the seasoning, which they sell in bright yellow boxes with that same hatching baby chick on the front. It's so popular that they are shipping it outside of Lansing and outside of Michigan.

The boxes list the ingredients as lemon pepper, cane sugar, salt, black pepper, lemon peel, navy bean flour, spices and a few others. But how to mix it, how much of each ingredient, is a secret, Haddad says.

"A lot of other places try to imitate us, use the name, but this is a name that was given to our chicken," Haddad said.

"What makes our chicken so special, you'll have to ask customers, but they're good," he laughed. "We haven't been selling them so well all these years for no reason."

After Meyer opened Eastside, it was his customers who started calling his chicken wings "crack chicken."

LoveLansing podcast: Talkin' crack chicken, Hot Wheels and Lansing's first-ever hot air balloon festival

But, he says, he began to get phone calls from a lot of older people, from churches, about that name.

"One lady, she had a son, I think, that overdosed on crack, maybe 20 years ago," Meyer said. "That conversation that she and I had, probably 3 ½ years ago, is what stopped me from ever advertising my chicken as “crack chicken” or putting it in my advertising."

The woman asked Meyer how it was going to feel good to know 10 years down the road, that he made money off something that has hurt so many people.

"And I told myself, it’s not going to feel good," he said. "I told myself if I can’t grow this company without calling it crack chicken, then I’m not going to grow the company. And look at me now. I did grow it. And I haven't called it crack chicken and we’re doing just fine."

But, if a customer comes in saying they want "crack chicken" wings, they will serve you their house-seasoned chicken wings.

And people ask for "crack chicken" wings every day, multiple times a day, he says.

"The last thing we want to do is argue with you as a customer about what you want," Meyer said. "If you want it as 'crack chicken' wings and that’s what you like it as, well then you can come get it."

Meyer won't give away his recipe for his seasoning, which they also sell at the counter, but he did offer up a few of the ingredients.

"It’s definitely lemony, it has a sweet little undertone because there’s actual sugar in it," Meyer said "It's salty, and there's no cayenne pepper or anything to make it hot, but it does have a little bite. And there’s real lemon peel, little small chunks, in it. Most people don't know that."

There are other ingredients, "but I just can’t tell you," he said. "Another thing that makes our chicken special I think, and people think I'm corny sometimes, but I think is the love that we put into our chicken, and it's real here."

And while the long white showcase at Eastside Fish Fry & Grill boasts red snapper, perch, catfish, walleye, shrimp and more, it's clearly the chicken wings with "House Seasoning" that brings in the majority of customers.

"You just want to keep coming back, every day," Jeon Choi said, as she waited for her order at Eastside. "I try different places all around. Sometimes I think about it late at night. Then I can't get it 'til the next day. I don't know....it's just delicious. Best chicken I have tasted."

Contact Vickki Dozier at (517) 267-1342 or vdozier@lsj.com. Follow her on Twitter @vickkiD.

Crack Chicken is sold at the following places in the Lansing area:

Eastside Fish Fry & Grill, 2417 E. Kalamazoo, Lansing

Fresh Fish & Fry, 3140 S. Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd., Lansing

Lansing Fish Market, 815 Edgewood Blvd. Lansing

Fish Market of Grand River 902 E. Grand River Ave., Lansing