N.H. restaurant says it invented chicken tenders

The scene: More than just a restaurant, the Puritan is a sprawling complex set just outside the downtown core of New Hampshire’s largest city, Manchester. As such, it would be very easy for the visitor or passerby to miss, but to anyone who lives anywhere in the broad region surrounding it, the restaurant is an institution. It has been here since its Greek immigrant owners opened it in 1917, and it has thrived beyond all expectations. Today there is a large conference center across a large parking lot from the large main building, which in turn houses an event space for weddings and private parties, a bustling to-go and prepared foods take-out counter, an indoor/outdoor ice cream window that is part of the childhood fabric of anyone living in these parts, and the restaurant itself.

The entrance confuses first time visitors as it is set around the back of the otherwise well-marked building, hence the “Puritan Backroom.” But if you are expecting some sort of hole-in-the-wall, forget it: Inside is a huge space with a large full bar and three semi-divided main dining rooms, served by a bustling army of servers carrying huge round trays laden with food. Everything here is big, and this place jumps.

To say the Puritan Backroom is locally popular is an understatement, and on any given day or night you will see multi-generational families, large groups of friends, teams of kids coming after sports games, couples on dates, and inevitably friends greeting friends they haven’t seen for a while. The sheer size of the space belies its intimacy. It is equal parts neighborhood tavern and food factory, a sea of booths and tables with a sort of diner-on-steroids feel. Puritan Backroom would be an interesting place to eat no matter what, but there is one especially compelling reason to visit: this unlikely spot claims to have contributed a popular dish to the American food canon — it is believed to be the birthplace of the chicken tender.

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Reason to visit: Chicken tenders, Greek macaroni and cheese, mudslide

The food: As is the case in many classic diners, the Greek ownership’s influence is seen on a massive menu that stretches from burgers to pastas to pizza to steaks, dotted with traces of Hellenic tradition, such as tzatziki sauce, hummus, fried feta, spanakopita, and the pita bread that accompanies rolls in the complimentary bread basket. There is also a fair sprinkling of New England dishes, including lobster, haddock and several options for fried seafood. Portions are very generous, and even if you are by yourself you will feel like you are enjoying a meal served family-style. Beyond the ample bread basket, every entrée includes coffee or tea; Greek house salad or soup of the day; and a side dish choice of fries, baked or mashed potato, two kinds of rice (house-style with tomato or brown) or vegetable of the day. You can also upgrade to sweet potato or spicy fries, or onion rings. You can add a laundry list of fried or stuffed seafood to the chicken dishes and even to other seafood dishes. Even if you order an entrée salad it is hard to go light here as there are nearly twenty different salad additions, from cottage cheese to, of course, chicken tenders.

There are several items on the vast menu designated as house specialties, and this array is eclectic, especially the broiled chicken breast and a few other dishes served or available with Puritan “special sauce,” a heralded family invention that combines olive oil, lemon, spices and soy sauce. Other signature dishes include lobster pie, barbecued lamb kebabs and the intriguing Greek macaroni and cheese, but despite the incredible breadth of offerings — there are even bison burgers —  by far the most popular dish at the Puritan, the one people go out of their way for and take home in vast quantities from the to-go counter, is the fried chicken tenders.

There are four flavors — regular, spicy, Buffalo and coconut — and they are available individually or as a sampler. They are offered as an appetizer, side dish or main course, as a wrap, as a salad topping, as a pizza topping, even as fried chicken tenders parmigiana. The story, as told by Chris Pappas, current generation of one of the founding families, is that back in 1974 they were serving boneless breasts, which involved trimming down whole breasts and leaving them with a pile of strips. The solution was to marinate and fry these, and they were quickly added to the menu and became a runaway success. While it does appear to be the first national mention of chicken tenders, there were other restaurants serving variations such as chicken fingers (generally thinner slices of the same piece) and chicken nuggets (often ground and reformed) at the time. So whether or not the Puritan was the progenitor of the chicken tender as we know it today involves semantics and is debatable. What we know for sure is that they are really good.

The key is in the marinating, so the flavor goes much deeper than the breading — it is in every bite. The chicken itself is juicy and real, not chopped or ground. These are chicken tenders the homemade way. They are served with three dipping sauces, honey mustard, ranch, and the house special homemade duck sauce, an unlikely option until you consider that Chinese restaurants were one of the first to widely serve boneless fried chicken appetizers in this country. Unlike most duck sauce it is almost clear, not orangey in color, and like the tenders themselves, tastes more real and less processed. It is delicious, the best of the sauces and likely better than any duck sauce you have had. They sell jars of it in their packaged food shop next door, alongside the homemade ice cream. The coconut tenders are extra crispy and have a slightly Pacific Rim flavor, and are great if you like coconut. My favorite was the spicy, which has a distinctively peppery taste, a heat that builds in intensity as you eat more, and lingers on your tongue. The Buffalo is also hot, but in a less nuanced hot sauce way that comes on immediately. Neither of these are exceptionally spicy and almost anyone could enjoy them. Oddly, the regular or original is the least interesting of the four, but by any standard, they are very good — as chicken tenders go.

The rest of the menu is more hit-and-miss: the daily soup (corn chowder) was excellent, but the barbecue lamb kebab and house-style rice were just so-so. One standout dish is the Greek macaroni and cheese. Like everything else, it’s a large portion — almost everyone we saw on a recent visit left with to-go boxes. It is a full oval baking dish stuffed with pasta, cheese, creamy rich béchamel sauce and lots of spinach, with a touch of cinnamon. It is a main dish and quite different from typical takes on mac and cheese.

Otherwise, leave room for ice cream — the Puritan has famously made their own for decades, and while there is no chicken tender option, there a couple of dozen flavors, from basics like peanut butter cup to regional specialties like maple walnut to esoteric orange pineapple.

There are a lot of unique — or odd — things about the Puritan Back Room, and one is the drink menu, as they do a very brisk bar business. Choices are as staggering as the food menu — the martini subheading alone has 15 options and there is a long list of beer on draft or in bottles. But the Puritan is famous for its mudslides, variations on booze-infused milkshakes, with the common thread that they all contain Kahlua and Bailey’s along with options such as vodka, rum, bourbon and assorted liqueurs. There are 16 signature mudslides, several of which attempt to recreate well-known dessert flavors such as Snickers or Milky Way bars, and there is even a churro flavor. They are deservedly popular, as they are unique and delicious, and while not on the menu, you can also order them in half sizes as they are quite large. Of the mudslides I tasted, the “Snickers” was my favorite.

Pilgrimage-worthy?: Not unless you are a chicken tender fanatic, but a great place to stop while road tripping though New England.

Rating: Mmmm!  (Scale: Blah, OK, Mmmm, Yum!, OMG!)

Price: $$ ($ cheap, $$ moderate, $$$ expensive)

Details: 245 Hooksett Road, Manchester, N.H.; 603-666-9893; puritanbackroom.com

Larry Olmsted has been writing about food and travel for more than 15 years. An avid eater and cook, he has attended cooking classes in Italy, judged a barbecue contest and once dined with Julia Child. Follow him on Twitter, @TravelFoodGuy, and if there's a unique American eatery you think he should visit, send him an email at [email protected]. Some of the venues reviewed by this column provided complimentary services.