Cheap Eats: Seven Hens (1)

Fast-food chicken schnitzel in Decatur

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  • James Camp
  • QUICK CHICK: Seven Hens’ Indian schnitzel sandwich with sweet curried yogurt sauce and crisp cucumber salad


Sometimes opportunity hides in plain sight; sometimes it hides so well that most people can’t even see it once it’s pointed out. For example, despite the fact that chicken seems to be the new burger in Atlanta (see Bantam & Biddy and Gio’s Chicken Amalfitano), it took a man from Israel to show this town that it needed a Subway-ish sandwich shop dedicated to chicken schnitzel. You didn’t see that one coming, did you? Yet Michael Gurevich, owner of Decatur’s Seven Hens, sees the schnitzel, aka chicken cutlet, as a tabula rasa of opportunity.

Seven Hens is to the chicken schnitzel fast-food joint as NaanStop (subject of a recent Cheap Eats) is to the Indian fast-food joint. Both, sparked by the passion of their owners, take a somewhat quasi-foreign concept and massage it into a familiar format, and both show the thought-through professionalism and quality that many small fast-food places don’t bother with.

Open since July, Seven Hens looks slick, with the type of polished logo and clean design that shout out, “Franchise opportunity!” With expanses of contemporary-rustic wood on the walls and bright, clean colors, Seven Hens looks especially inviting relative to its neighbors at North Decatur Plaza, a somewhat shabby collection of random shops and casual eateries.

Continue reading Cheap Eats: Seven Hens here.