At this Tacoma haunt, the fried chicken and jojos haven’t changed in decades

Where there was once green shag carpet on the walls, there are now parquet wood panels. Where there was carpet on the floor, well, there’s still carpet — it was, for some reason, replaced in the late ‘90s. The stone pizza oven, with a patina that tells the story of thousands of pies, has resided in the kitchen of 3410 N. Proctor St. in Tacoma since the ‘60s, estimates Donnie Bailey.

He should know: He’s been cooking at Terry’s Office Tavern for three decades, under two sets of previous owners and current proprietors Jeff and Helen Fraychinaud, who bought the bar in 2018.

That’s a lot of pizza, which is cool and all, but we’re here for something that, like the bar itself, hasn’t much changed since the business transitioned from a soda-and-candy shop with beer to a true tavern in 1962.

Terry’s fried chicken and jojos — both poultry and potato doused in Krusteaz Western Chicken Breader and Batter Mix — characterizes the nature of a neighborhood hangout that has withstood the tests of time and rising house prices. The dish ain’t fancy, but it’s hot, crispy, juicy, reliable and filling, served with sour cream and familiarity. I mean, you get a whole potato, even in the smallest order of a half chicken (four pieces, $17).

“We’ve been doing it the same way since I started here 21 years ago,” said manager Dave Hecht in August. “It’s never changed, and it just tastes fantastic.”

A standard order takes precisely 12 minutes to cook inside the 320-degree, oil-filled pressure fryer, a piece of commercial restaurant equipment with a locking spindle that looks more like the seal necessary for a compartment door in the Titanic boiler room than a tool for juicy chicken thighs.

Terry’s has long used a Henny Penny, said Bailey, the preferred brand of household names including Chick-fil-A and Kentucky Fried Chicken.

A man named Chester Wagner developed the Henny Penny system in 1957, when his Eaton, Ohio, restaurant couldn’t make fried chicken fast enough. KFC, however, claims its founder Harland Sanders began tinkering — rather dangerously — with high pressure and hot oil in the late ‘40s, selling his first franchise to a Salt Lake City entrepreneur in 1952.

As Slate reported in 2013, “The seasoning is what’s famous today, but the pressure cooker is what’s important.”

Without this technology, fast fried chicken simply would not exist.

Where do the potatoes enter the picture?

I have fond memories of being the only one in my family who actually enjoyed the potato wedges at KFC, which the company has discontinued in favor of typically shaped fries. Beyond those fast-food moments, I have zero recollection of ever encountering a similar wedge in my homeland of southwestern Pennsylvania or in the Midwest, where I lived for 10 years — that is, until I moved to Tacoma.

The lore of pressure-fried chicken and jos runs deep in the Pacific Northwest. While the pressure fryer itself was invented in the Midwest, the origins of the potato part of the equation is an ongoing culinary battle between the two regions.

According to his son Paul, Nick Nicewonger of Vancouver, Washington, was the first to toss potatoes into a Flavor-Crisp brand pressure fryer alongside the chicken. He sold the then-newfangled restaurant equipment in the Portland area, and at a trade show in the late ‘50s, demonstrated its capabilities with hastily sliced potatoes. The crowd went wild, as Paul explained to Willamette Week in 2017, and thus they were called jojos — for no apparent reason.

Meanwhile, in 1961 Nebraska, another pressure fryer hawker claims he put russets in the machine and called them the same thing, and in 1953 a Wisconsinite named L.A.M. Phelan created the Broaster, now a colloquial term for combination broiling and roasting.

What I can tell you for sure is that the battered and pressure-fried potato wedge, crackly on the outside and creamy on the inside, was news to me when I landed here. I remain, purposely, unfamiliar with the gas station versions I’ve been told are prevalent because I’d rather spend the night at Terry’s, where the fellow in the kitchen has been locking that spindle for 30 years. That’s almost as long as I’ve been alive, and yet, they greet you like family, interrupting a conversation to ask how you are and what you’d like.

The first time I sat down at Terry’s, pre-pandemic, I was alone. There was no record screech but nods, seeming to say, “You found us.”

In between serving me and a few other patrons, the bartender, Greg, sat down with regulars at another table.

“It’s like a backyard barbecue,” said Hecht.

It may not be the trendiest or even the best, but it’s the experience and the staff that sustain a place like Terry’s — and its predecessor Ryan’s Confectionery and Tavern, 1936-1962 — for nearly 60 years.

That’s the lore I want to share when introducing others to the Northwest’s famous fried chicken and jojos.

TERRY’S OFFICE TAVERN

▪ 3410 N. Proctor St., Tacoma, 253-752-6262, terrysofficetavern.com

▪ Details: neighborhood bar with burgers, fried favorites and stone-oven pizzas, plus pressure-fried chicken and jojos

▪ $17 for a half order, $22 for a whole chicken, $27 for a Cluck and Half; large to-go orders available, call ahead encouraged

This story was originally published August 17, 2021 at 5:00 AM.