Kipp's Chicken is (not exactly) no more

The closure of a fried chicken place makes me think about the Filipino thing for malls, our lack of open public spaces, and my childhood memories slowly going away.

As with most things these days, this begins with an online news article whose primary source is a social media post. The upstart Filipino business site Bilyonaryo, citing a couple of tweets, reported that Kipp’s Chicken was closing down its store at SM Megamall, one of the biggest shopping malls in Manila.

Clickbait, you may say. It is not really a big story, after all. But then, sometimes these articles get lucky. They got lucky with me.

I have very fond memories of Kipp’s Chicken. Sure, it isn’t the best fried chicken in the Philippines—it doesn’t quite stand a chance against Jollibee’s Chickenjoy. But as a little boy, there was something comforting about the idea of a meal of fried chicken and “Spanish rice”—slightly seasoned and definitely yellow in color—accompanied by a very sweet macaroni salad and warm gravy, both in little red cups. Whenever my family went to the mall, I would always hope that we would go to Kipp’s.

Sorry, let me explain. In Philippine cities there aren’t a lot of places to go to. I mean, few parks, few public places of that sort. What we have are malls, and lots of them: a capitalist, consumerist approach to weekends, stacked with casual dining restaurants, coffee shops, entertainment facilities and every shop imaginable. (And, if you’re lucky, there’s some green space there, too.) I live in the middle of the capital, and there are six malls within a one-kilometer radius from my flat—and I’m not counting other commercial complexes that don’t exactly fall into that category.

(I know it’s not that unusual at least in southeast and east Asian cities to be filled with malls, but I have been to Hong Kong, Kuala Lumpur, Taipei, Seoul, Singapore and Bangkok—and they have way more parks and open public spaces than Manila. We only really have Rizal Park, and a few others that are part of malls and are not exactly open to the public.)

Some will say the situation is worse now, but the rise of the Filipino shopping mall was set in stone decades ago. There were a handful in the capital in the 1970s—the now-demolished Harrison Plaza in Manila was the first to open back in 1976; another prominent one was Ali Mall, named after Muhammad Ali, built in Quezon City a few months later—but it was in 1985 when department store mogul Henry Sy opened “The SM City” in a relatively remote part of Quezon City.

That kicked off a shopping mall empire that now counts 90 facilities—including some of the biggest malls in the world—as well as eight in China. The template was successful enough that other real estate developers followed suit, and now the country—and Manila, especially—is dotted with all these malls, accompanied by shiny office buildings and not-so-shiny residential towers, all with the same shops inside.

But when I was a little boy, back in the 1990s, there really weren’t that many of them. I had a thing back then for counting how many SM malls there were. In 1995, the company opened their fifth, Southmall, in Las Piñas—the closest shopping mall to my childhood home in Cavite, south of the capital. Every two weeks the family would go there—we didn’t have a car then, so it took two jeepney rides—to walk around, check out some stores, have lunch, and then do the groceries before going home.

Lunch was always at the food court at the basement. SM malls back then had a pretty predictable template: the supermarket and the department store at the ground floor; cinemas at the third floor; a food court, and maybe a skating rink, at the basement. And the food court had, more or less, the same tenants whichever mall you were in. There is Sizzling Plate, which had cheap steaks served on, well, a sizzling plate. There is Ilonggo Grill, which we also liked because of its grilled squid meal. (I liked the idea of Ilonggo Grill, because it always seemed to have so much food whenever I pass by, most of it food that I always considered “adult”.)

And then there’s Kipp’s Chicken. Again, it doesn’t really hold a candle to Jollibee. It’s flavorful, but the breading isn’t thick and therefore is just barely crispy. But—and this may come as a surprise if your image of Filipinos is one who often went to Jollibee—I didn’t really go much to Jollibee as a kid. I’m not sure why. There were just always too many people? Families flocked there, and we just went elsewhere. We went to the food court. If we were lucky, my sister and I got Kipp’s.

It all changed when our family moved up the ladder, so to speak. We got a car. We had more options. New malls were built much closer to us. Alabang Town Center is an Ayala development—and Ayala malls tended to be more upscale. (When it built a food court, it was located on the second floor.) And then, slightly further away was Festival Supermall, which was familiar to SM-goers but not so. For starters, it had two indoor theme parks, and a train ride at the basement, passing by its food court, which did not have Kipp’s. Maybe it was an SM exclusive; I’m not sure.

But in any case, our family’s malling habits changed. SM no longer appealed to us because it was always crowded and didn’t have the shops we wanted to go to. Their cinemas back then were also dingy. Alabang Town Center had plush seats. Watched a lot of movies there when I was in high school. And then I went to college and went to different places—although Southmall was my bus stop from university, a transfer point to a jeepney back to my home. (I did not stay in a dorm.)

And then I went to work and, again, went to different places. I was earning money. I can try other things. I worked in the Ortigas area, so I went to Megamall for lunch. It has a Kipp’s Chicken at the basement food court, but I liked the idea of World Chicken—grilled chicken, your choice of sauce and sides—even more. If I was feeling even fancier, I’d eat at Kenny Roger’s Roasters. That isn’t in the food court; that is a stand-alone restaurant.

I did eat at Kipp’s a couple of times. It still hit the spot, although the “Spanish rice” was less yellow. I always thought it would be there forever.

Of course, it isn’t going to be the case.

I went to the Kipp’s branch at Megamall last Saturday. There were more people than usual. The staff tried to be cheery about it, which is a feat considering they’d be out of a job on Monday. It’s not yet twelve noon and they have run out of spaghetti. Again, more people than usual.

The Kipp’s menu is pretty straightforward. A one-piece chicken meal or a two-piece chicken meal? Do you want “Spanish rice” or spaghetti? (Yes, Filipino-style spaghetti, more sweet than sour, supposedly offending Italians. It’s a standard in fast food places here, local or foreign.) Do you want macaroni salad on the side? 35-year-old Niko would’ve loved mixed vegetables on the side, but 7-year-old Niko is in charge this lunchtime, and this is fine. I got a chicken wing, which isn’t a lot of chicken, really, but this is fine. This is good. This is the last time I’ll ever have Kipp’s. It’s worth me walking from my usual mall, where I do my groceries, to another mall, in this heat. This is good.

Well, it was fine. But the textures were familiar. The sloppy macaroni salad, with its sweet-but-slightly-tangy mayonnaise dressing. The vagueness of the “Spanish rice”, less yellow and less flavorful than I remember. The thin breading of the chicken feels the same as when I was a kid, though. Tastes the same. Sure, the pieces are smaller compared to what we get elsewhere now—and also, I got a chicken wing—but nostalgia is filling my tummy.

I was in the queue with another guy who went to Kipp’s for one last shot at nostalgia—the exact last shot as mine, the exact same meal.

“I went here a lot in the early 2000s,” he said, “when I was in college.”

“Me, when I was a kid,” I answered. “Early 90s.” I realized I was probably wrong, and that I sounded like I was trying to one-up the guy.

“I had to go back here one last time,” he said. “I mean, they will still have one branch open, but that’s too far from me.”

Nope, Kipp’s isn’t closing entirely, unlike what the article vaguely suggested (but didn’t). Only the Megamall branch is, and not necessarily because it isn’t doing well. The entire food court is closing, in preparation for a massive redevelopment of the mall, one that moves it away from the old everything-in-a-box template typical of early SM malls, and towards, in the developer’s words, something closer to Jewel Changi. (Which isn’t really that exciting—and I have been there.)

The last remaining Kipp’s will be at the food court… at Southmall, that mall I used to go to as a seven-year-old, that place with my fondest memories of that fried chicken meal. But even then, that mall has changed drastically from what it was as a kid. Of course. Filipino mall-goers change their preferences and priorities. Again, the mall is our public space. We go there not so much to shop but to hang out. (And if we were to shop, we’d probably want to go to the international brands that have popped up here in recent years.) In the past two decades, Southmall changed all of its insides, losing a third of its retail space (including its indoor theme park) while gaining more casual dining restaurants and moving everything else around. The food court is now at the second floor, and is no longer as dimly-lit as back then.

It wouldn’t be the same, but then, it’s not like I would drive an hour—it shouldn’t take an hour, but Manila traffic, you know—to eat chicken from when I was seven. So, here’s to you, Kipp’s. I hope you still survive, because a lot of things from my childhood certainly haven’t.