All my life, I’ve loved corn. I love it on, but mainly off, the cob. I’ll eat it plain, with butter, salt, creamed, popped, in a cup, baked into bread, but I am here to discuss the best way: stuffed into a nugget and fried.
The grease is a good sign. Maddy McCarty/The Hub@TTU
If you’re wondering what is in that brown bag, it is the southern delicacy I just described known as corn nuggets.
Not to be confused with Corn Nuts or corn fritters, they are basically like chicken nuggets, but filled with creamed corn.
I first encountered corn nuggets when I was a youngun growing up on the Mississippi Gulf Coast. My mom confirmed that our family would go to a buffet called Montana’s (now closed) and I think I exclusively ate yeast rolls and corn nuggets.
I went without them for a while when my family moved to Houston during middle school. But when I came to Texas Tech, I was reunited with my love thanks to Golden Chick.
Golden Chick and I had a very special relationship. A junior-sized meal was plenty for me, so I could get my chicken tender fix for less than $6. Their gravy was always warm, their fries crispy, their yeast rolls soft and their tea sweet. They offered options of spicy, regular or mixed tenders.
Sometimes I Snapchat about my super-serious problems.
I once had such a pleasant experience in their drive-thru at the Glenna Goodacre location, I went online and left a positive review. Whether I was hungover, feeling lazy, or just wanted some good chicken and corn nuggets, Golden Chick was always there for me. That is until it shut down without warning.
I called and left a message with Golden Chick’s customer service department, asking why the three Lubbock locations shut down. I haven’t gotten a call back, and now the closest location is in Colorado City, Texas, 100 miles away.
I knew of another place that formerly served corn nuggets, Whitewood Lanes. Located on 50th Street, it offers great bowling specials along with cheap alcohol and food. Their corn nuggets were delectable, but have since been taken off the menu.
Stefan Wood, who has worked at Whitewood Lanes for over five years, agrees with me.
“While they were really good, and a lot of people liked them, they just weren’t sold all that much because we sold them primarily as a breakfast item,” Wood said.
He said they don’t have much of an opportunity to serve breakfast items at the bowling alley, but I think corn nuggets are good anytime, day or night. I told him about my heartbreak when I realized they had been taken off the menu last summer.
But, Wood also said that their food is awesome because they come up with the recipes in house.
“Our house burger, we came up with it ourselves. We hand-batter our chicken nuggets,” he said. “Most of the stuff we serve is more genuine than people think.”
Other fried food they still offer includes jalapeños, mushrooms, okra and onion rings.
But now, here’s my situation: there’s only one place in Lubbock left with corn nuggets: Chicken Express.
Corn nuggets from Chicken Express. Maddy McCarty/The Hub@TTU
I don’t have anything specifically against Chicken Express, but I always told my friends “I’m a Golden Chick girl.” But Chicken E has an advantage. It sells both a regular or family-size side of corn nuggets.
The family size is what I brought to the office last week to photograph and share. Our staff adviser, Phil Terrigno, is a native of New York and had never tried corn nuggets before. He was a fan, and said adding some ranch dressing or Sriracha sauce would be “a major key.”
It’s unfortunate he never got to try them from Golden Chick, because I think they were way better. I expect Chicken Express has seen a spike in sales of their corn nuggets since the options of places to buy them in Lubbock have plummeted.
I wanted to be sure I wasn’t missing any places that might sell corn nuggets, so I checked with the other bowling alley. The employee that answered the phone at South Plains Lanes surprisingly wasn’t weirded out by my question of, “Do y’all serve corn nuggets?”
He said that they just changed vendors, and they will actually be adding them to their menu this week.
South Plains Lanes, all eyes on you. I truly hope your corn nuggets are the best in Lubbock.
About Maddy McCarty
