At least a dozen restaurants in Greater Woonsocket serve this staple, at incredibly low prices. With few, and slight, variations, it consists of baked chicken, pasta with red sauce, French fries, rolls, and salad, with unlimited refills on everything.
Of course there are rules about gluttony. If you don't finish what the server brings in the first round, you may take home the leftovers. You may not take home anything from subsequent rounds.
Wright's Farm was not the first to offer family-style chicken dinners (that distinction goes to the Bocce Club), but it is certainly the biggest purveyor and the restaurant that has hewed mostly closely to the tradition of all chicken, all the time, while others have expanded their menus to match any full-service eatery.
We visited four restaurants that serve chicken family style and found that while the chicken is terrific everywhere, there are subtle differences in side dishes and atmosphere.
The secret to moist, falling-off-the-bone chicken, all the restaurateurs said, is slow cooking. Frank Galleshaw, Wright's Farm's owner, said each 2 1/2- to 3-pound chicken takes up to three hours to cook. The chickens are baked whole, then cut up to serve.
If you're into statistics, Wright's Farm has them. The restaurant can seat 1,400 people. It serves some 12,000 chicken dinners ($10.25) weekly over four days, tearing through 14,000 pounds of Perdue chicken and 11,000 pounds of potatoes, said Galleshaw, whose family has run the restaurant since 1972. Reluctantly, Wright's offers one other entree -- steak (minus the all-you-can-eat option) -- but Galleshaw said those orders account for less than 1 percent of the total business.
At Wright's the wait often exceeds the time you spend eating. Diners kill time in a 4,000-square-foot gift shop filled with bath products, home and garden accessories, toys, old-fashioned penny candy, and specialty food items, such as the restaurant's salad dressing, pasta sauce, and homemade fudge.
We thought the chicken at Wright's was the best of those we tasted, and we loved the fresh rolls. But the atmosphere was definitely institutional. Dining rooms were incredibly noisy, and rolling busing crews clearing tables added to the din.
