Last Thursday, if you walked into The Whale craft beer bar in the West End of downtown Greenville, you would’ve been greeted by the wafting aroma of frying chicken. Regular patrons of The Whale would no doubt have been confused by the delicious smells: the “craft beer collective,” as the bar is officially dubbed, has small food offerings here and there, but certainly not fried chicken, and certainly not the massive amount of fried chicken that was being cooked right beside the bar.
But this was a unique day for The Whale, the start of a partnership that not only offers up delicious food for bar-goers, but also offers up just one example of the unique character of the restaurant and bar scene in the West End.
“The West End is a unique spot,” said Travis Armour, the man preparing the chicken at The Whale on Thursday. Armour’s real job, though, is just down the street: he’s currently the general manager of Husk, the Southern-style restaurant that is often called one of the best eateries in Greenville. Bringing Husk’s famous fried chicken over to The Whale was all about the two establishments working together to drum up business. In other words, to have each other’s backs. The way Armour sees it, that’s what makes eateries and bars in the West End unique.
“Over here in the West End, we’re kind of separated from everything on Main Street,” Armour said. “So we try to help each other out by bringing more foot traffic down to this area.”
Armour is well aware of the importance of foot traffic.
“You know, when people get to Falls Park, they usually start turning around and going back up on North Main,” Armour said. “So us here on the West End, we’re just trying to see what we can do to drum up business with each other.”
And the best way to do that, he said, is through partnerships.
The chicken is a good example. The smell alone is enough to draw people in: clouds of fatty, oily, southern cooking wafting out onto the road.
“I’d put our chicken up against anybody’s fried chicken in the state, no problem,” Armour said as he tonged out a few pieces onto a paper takeout tray. Then he dusts them with a red powder, places a biscuit beside it, along with some pickles, and a container of house-made butter.
“It’s a double breaded buttermilk brined fried chicken with a little bit of what we call the five fats: which is pork fat, ham fat, chicken fat, bacon fat, and butter,” Armour explained. “We drizzle that over the chicken after it comes out of the fryer. And then we finish it off with a dusting of our hot sauce powder.”
The fried chicken night is a way to co-sign one another, share their customers, to hopefully build up lasting relationships with eaters and drinkers alike.
As for the success of the event, Armour was tonging out the last pieces of chicken around 6:42 – the event was scheduled to go from 6 pm to 8 pm.
“But we’re already out,” he said. “Everybody’s loving it, and it’s been a lot more guests than I thought we’d have. Don’t worry, we got reinforcements coming in, more chicken on the way. But we’ll have to do this more often.”
Husk is open seven days a week for dinner, with lunch options on Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday, and brunch on Saturday and Sunday.
The Whale is open Sunday through Thursday from 2 pm to 10 pm, and from noon to Midnight Friday through Saturday.
