Birdie Roosts in The Exchange Food Hall With Chicken Tenders and Return of the Mac

Birdie is a new restaurant by chef Josh Harmon, who trained at some lauded restaurants such as David Burke Townhouse, The Dutch, Le Cirque and Buddhakan in New York City. Locally, he spent time at the James Beard-nominated Petra and The Beast and, in 2019, competed on the Food Network's Restaurant Rivals, where he took first place.
The concept of Birdie, per Harmon in a press release, is to "raise the bar in terms of what a chicken tender place can be."

This new spot is located in The Exchange food hall in downtown, which is adjacent to AT&T's giant plaza and local headquarters. The Exchange focuses on local food vendors with communal eating spaces, almost cafeteria style. Revolver Taco has a space there, Monkey King Noodle Co., The Dock and recently Easy Slider also moved in. When you spy Birdie toward the back, you might notice their sign is kind of similar to another rather popular chicken place. Or maybe not.

Here the focus is on chicken tenders served in a few different styles. Half of the menu swings Southern with things like macaroni and cheese, warm potato salad and hot chicken sandwiches. While other options are Asian-influenced, like a Korean chili glaze, bao and katsu.

The menu breaks it out easy enough: pick your flavor (OG fried, Nashville hot or spicy honey); next pick a  style (on a stick, bao, sandwich, tendy and toast or katsu); then there are dips and sides.

We started with a Southern tour that included a Nashville hot sandwich served with a pickle with a house-made sauce on a toasted bun for $9. For dips, which are 75 cents each, we tried the dill pickle ranch. The sandwich was on par, if not better, than many of the hot chicken sandwiches we've had in Dallas over the past year. The buttery toasted bun and not-too-thick tenders had a nice ratio. The crisp pickle (there was one really wide slice of pickle) gave it a nice crunch, and additional sauce wasn't needed. The Birdie sauce slathered over the tenders was all the dressing it needed.

The macaroni and cheese, aptly called Return of the Mac, was some of the best we've had. A thick layer of melted aged cheddar cheese lazing over the top of the little tin ramekin was like art. The elbow noodles were tender, not mushy at all, and the thick creamy sauce covering everything was beautifully obscene.
We also tried a bao with a spicy honey chicken tender and pickle. The bun was perfect and the spicy honey glaze carried a nice amount of heat, but nothing overwhelming. These were $7 each and had we known it was a single tender deal, we might have ordered two for a full meal, but then $14 for two strips of chicken in bao might feel like ... well, the price of food these days.

A house-made Asian sesame slaw was crisp and bright, but had a bit much of a fishy taste. Perhaps this was just not the right pairing for a meal otherwise centered around deep-fried tenders. The slaw might have been perfect with another meal, but here the flavors felt mismatched. 

Eventually, they want to add Kool-Aid flavored slushies and offer chicken and biscuits on Sundays.

Birdie at the Exchange, 211 S. Akard St. 10:30 a.m. to 9 p.m. Sunday - Wednesday, 10:30 a.m. to 11 p.m. Thursday - Saturday