Ample Hills Burger Follow-up, Ramblin’ Chick

History only takes shape in retrospect, but to me, there’s always been something Obama-era about the saga of serial ice cream entrepreneurs Brian Smith and Jackie Cuscuna — and not just because Smith originally made his name as an audiobook director whose career-defining tape, in 2005, was Obama’s recording of his 1995 memoir, Dreams From My Father.

The duo always had a cheery, “we did a thing” vibe, and so did their ice cream: wacky but educated combinations of flavors like Snap, Mallow, Pop (marshmallow and Rice Krispies) and It Came From the Gowanus (dark fudge with caramel). The store itself was named after a snatch of Whitman and grew almost instantly from a pushcart in Prospect Park to a shop front on Vanderbilt Avenue. At the time of Ample Hills’ original opening, in 2011, I lived directly across the street and watched lines form down the block.

One store led to many, led to a factory, led to personal and professional bankruptcies, led to demise. That story is well known, but while the intervening years have dinged the allure of Obama-era schmaltz — for one thing, tagging dessert items “crack,” as Ample Hills and many others did around this time, is no longer seen as LOL-sy — the indefatigable Smith and Cuscuna still seem to exemplify that earlier, questing tweeness. Their new enterprise is a fast-casual, kid-friendly Carroll Gardens sandwich shop called Ramblin’ Chick, whose mascot is a bindle-toting hen roaming America in the spirit of Woody Guthrie’s “Ramblin’ Round.” (Obama was also a Guthrie guy — lest we forget, Bruce Springsteen and Pete Seeger performed “This Land Is Your Land” at his 2009 inauguration.) But you could just about call it I Can Haz Chickenburger?

You can, but should you? I did my best on a pair of sequential weekends to test the theory with as little reference to the long, much-discussed history of the Smiths as possible. Whatever their weaknesses as businesspeople, Smith and Cuscuna also had something special as cooks and alchemists. I made my way through many pints of their stretchy, taffy-sweet Ooey Gooey Butter Cake. They clearly have a talent, and they refuse to skulk quietly to the sidelines. A poster outlining their falls and rises is prominently displayed in the shop. Yes, we’ve screwed up, they seem to say, but sí, they puede!

The animating question of Ramblin’ Chick is, “What if a burger … were chicken?” Smith grinds Bell & Evans thighs in-house and griddles them flat and crispy, smashburger style. The old Ample Hills alchemy comes in via the suggested topics of a few topical burgers: a Buffalo-chicken style, with a sweet-hot crumble of toasted Cheetos and crisp cornflakes, an inspired combination; a chicken-and-waffles burger with bacon, maple butter, and hot honey. You can order your fries with “chicken dust” — crackled skin bits, essentially Yiddish gribenes, which I would not have been surprised to see spun into Ample Hills’ sweet-cream base back in the day — or mac ’n’ cheese with pretzel crumbs. And though the shop is located in a less-than-ideal-for-casual-foot-traffic stretch of Court Street down by the Gowanus, within days of opening, the shop closed again for the installation of a new and larger grill, something I learned when I went down to find the grate closed and an apologetic sign.

That may be a proof of concept (the people want more chickenburgers!) or an admission that logistics still bedevil the team. Maybe both. The hours have already been reduced to dinner only, and on my first visit, two hours after opening, they’d sold out of every side. (On neither visit could I try their nuggets, though Cuscuna said they’d be available this week. Ground in-house of a combination of thigh and breast meat, brined, and fried twice, they’re a high-touch nugget.) Still, the small shop was full, with exhausted-looking parents jamming strollers into corners and curious Ample tourists here to try the latest.

I ordered an “OG Brooklyn Burger” with caramelized onions, American cheese, and “Secret Ramblin’ Sauce.” It looked appealing, golden patties (each burger comes with two, though you can order singles if you prefer) whose pineapple-orange color peeks through their charred griddling, hanging over their soft, squishy buns. The OG isn’t done any real favors by its generous helping of caramelized onions, which give it a sweet mush flavor; I preferred, surprising myself, the Buffalo version I had on a subsequent visit, whose MSG-laced sharpness and acidic, hot-sauce tang better balanced the scales.

The thing I couldn’t shake with either is that there’s a reason people don’t generally make burgers with ground chicken. Even thigh meat is leaner than ground beef, and the wetness of the sauces and toppings wasn’t enough to lend the burger itself the satisfying drip of a great patty. Taken alone, the patty has a rubbly chewiness.

Sides fared better. The fries are perfectly decent, the 18-spice chicken chili better: warmly spiced and topped with chopped onions. (I asked Cuscuna, working the counter, what the 18 spices in the chili were, but she shrugged. “Brian shows up with bags and bags from Kalustyan’s,” she said. In fairness, McDonald’s doesn’t share its Special Sauce recipe, either.) The best, though, was the soft serve, which makes me suspect that ice cream still holds a special place in their inventors’ hearts. On my last visit, one option had Fan Fan Doughnuts steeped in the base.

Will it be enough? Smith and Cuscuna have been counted out before. Meanwhile, a captive audience hungers. I watched a father run his adorable toddler up and down the shop before bundling her off for bathtime and bed; she’d demolished the sampler cup of soft serve Cuscuna offered them. They lived nearby, he said, and all their neighbors were eager to hear his report back.