Fried Chicken, Mexican Poutine and a Champagne Vending Machine

There’s a highly anticipated new crack house opening in Century City this week.

(Rifles through large stack of notes.)

Sorry. We totally blew that intro.

We meant to say that the Crack Shack is opening in Century City this week. That’s Richard Blais’s popular fried chicken and beer restaurant from San Diego. It opens Saturday and looks like this.

But it could still prove habit-forming. You’ll find out when you enter on the eastern side of Westfield, pass one really big chicken and be guided to the bar or a table somewhere in between the Champagne vending machine and the framed portraits of heritage roosters dressed in the uniforms of our local sports franchises. Friends with irrational bird phobias need not apply.

Anyway, if your date is the label-fixated type, you can assure them that their fried chicken is Jidori, their biscuits are made in-house and their eggs are of an equally esteemed upbringing. Right before you clink your big ol’ beers, Hot Mess cocktails (mezcal, Ancho Reyes, honey, lime and grapefruit) or Salt & Straw milkshakes together and start to laugh, accepting that everyone is who they are and that’s just fine.

Because in the end, you have no control over fate. Long before you left bed that morning, there was a half order of fried chicken dusted in “crack spice” in your future. And a California Dip with pollo asado, schmaltz fries and pozole broth in theirs. And between the two of you, an ample serving of Mexican poutine.

You had no way of seeing that coming.