My family has never been a fan of a traditional turkey dinner, so it’s rare that I get the works with turkey, stuffing, cranberry sauce and so on. We’re much more the type to do roasts or individual Cornish hens for those with the craving for poultry come holiday meal times. Generally speaking, I’m the only one in the family that loves a good roasted turkey with stuffing, so I’m unfortunately outnumbered most of the time (even though I’m usually the one doing the cooking).
So when we were passing by a Scores recently, I couldn’t pass up the opportunity to have some roasted chicken and potatoes. Luckily for me, it’s also their Holiday Feast time of year which means you also get stuffing and cranberry sauce with your meal!
The first time I heard of Scores, I thought it sounded like a sports bar or a pub of some sort. What it is, is a restaurant very similar to Swiss Chalet but with the addition of a soup, salad and fruit bar which you can add to any meal option. The inside of the Mississauga location is warm and cozy, again, very similar to a Swiss Chalet with big comfortable booths and warm reds and yellows for decor.
Starting from $9.95 (more if you choose the white meat option) you can order the Holiday Feast: a quarter chicken, sweet potato fries, stuffing, cranberry sauce and the soup, salad and fruit bar. I know white meat is better for me, but I prefer dark meat when I’m eating chicken. I find that the flavour is better retained and it’s much less dry than white meat. So, I chose the quarter chicken with the thigh and leg.
While waiting for my meal, I started with the soup. There is always the Chicken Noodle soup – a flavourful broth chock full of noodles, big chunks of chicken and vegetables. It was delicious and tasted homemade. The other soup of the day was Cream of Vegetable – a choice I wish I hadn’t tried. It tasted of pureed vegetables drenched in butter, and was much too rich for my liking. If that’s your cup of tea, then all the more power to you; but I was unable to have more than a spoonful.
The salad bar has the standard Caesar and fresh greens with a variety of chopped vegetables and dressings. There were also a number of mixed salads from traditional potato to coleslaw to pasta with feta and olives. One of my favourites was the couscous salad with raisins and carrots, whereas the boyfriend enjoyed the egg noodles with Thai sesame dressing and green peppers. There was certainly enough of a variety to tempt even the most discerning of salad eaters into trying at least a few choices.
When the hot food came, I was surprised at the size of the portion. The chicken was large and took up more than half the plate, and there was a healthy portion of sweet potato fries, a large scoop of stuffing, a cup of the rotisserie sauce and a spoonful of cranberry sauce. I don’t normally care for the sauce, and our server was more than happy to bring me a cup of their normal gravy instead.
I will normally choose sweet potato fries over regular fries if given the option, and was surprised that the Holiday Feast came with sweet potatoes as its standard offering. The fries were crispy coated and soft and sweet on the inside. There was not much salt on them, so you could really enjoy the sweet potato flavour. The stuffing was reminiscent of boxed stuffing mix you could buy at the grocery store and was heavy on the sage. I chose to skip the stuffing and focused my attention the mountain of fries instead. The cranberry sauce was nothing special and could have been from any can, but went well with the chicken. Speaking of the chicken, it was fantastic. It was perfectly roasted so that the skin was crispy but the meat was tender and fell off the bone. The seasonings had seeped into the meat so every bite was flavourful and moist. I could have probably eaten a whole chicken and fallen into a happy chicken overdose.
If you’re looking for comfort food and like Swiss Chalet, I encourage you to make a trip out to Scores Rotisserie and Ribs to try their chicken. I myself actually prefer it over Swiss Chalet, as I found both the soup and the chicken to be better seasoned and prepared here at Scores. My only complaint is that there isn’t one closer to home.
2 comments:
Ever go to St Hubert when we had one in Toronto?
I did! There was one on the Queensway near Sherway that we used to go to a lot. Again, loved their chicken - hated their "chalet" sauce.
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