Family-owned fried chicken shop has been feeding Toronto Blue Jays fans since the '70s

A family-run fried chicken restaurant in Toronto has found an unlikely customer base over its nearly 50 years in business: Blue Jays fans.

The tagline at Leslieville's Chick-N-Joy may be "love at first bite," but, upon visiting, I'd actually argue that the love begins the second you step inside the cozy Queen East restaurant.

A neighbourhood stalwart that's been around since 1977, the chicken shop is easy to overlook. It's nestled on a strip of Queen East that skews residential, and its sign is so delightfully retro that it's easy to assume the place is vacant; merely an orange and yellow skeleton of a bygone era.

You'd be remiss to pass it by, though, because beyond the charmingly nostalgic aesthetic and friendly vibes, the chicken also just so happens to be really, really good.

Founded in 1977, the restaurant was founded by John Doufekas when he, upon receiving acclaim across his social circles for his fried chicken recipe, decided it was time to bring it to the masses.

Since then — 48 years and counting — the chicken shop has operated just the way it did back then, exclusively serving sizeable, juicy hunks of country-style fried chicken atop beds of fresh, thick-cut fries with sides like potato and macaroni salad.

The only difference is that now, John's daughter, Dimitra, runs the show, while his son, Bill, mans the kitchen in the back.

The original recipe, written on a typewriter in the 1970s, is the one that Bill still uses to this day.

Over the years, the restaurant has attracted a devoted fanbase of regulars, something that I'm lucky enough to bear witness to on numerous occasions during my visit to Chick-N-Joy.

The average interaction goes something like this: a customer enters the restaurant, Dimitra greets them by name, recites their usual order to them before they can and, within 10 minutes, they walk out with a steaming, fragrant box of chicken. While they wait? There's only one thing to discuss: the Blue Jays.

See, in Chick-N-Joy's 48-year lifetime, it's become something of a satellite clubhouse for Jays fans on the east side of the city. It's by no means a sports bar, but customers revel in dissecting the game-du-jour with the Doufekas family.

It feels written in the stars, seeing as the restaurant was established the very same year that the Toronto Blue Jays played their inaugural season.

It started off simply, with fans stopping by after games to discuss the results of the night prior with the Doufekas family, but things quickly started to snowball. Now, every season, Dimitra and Bill deck the entire restaurant out in Jays memorabilia, and fans have even begun to gift mementos to the restaurant.

A cabinet in the restaurant is stocked with everything from signed balls to bobble heads, all from customers who brought them in, just because they know how much the family loves the team.

"It's a really warm feeling," Dimitra tells blogTO, "at the end of the night, when you've had a great day, customers are coming in. Everybody's really cool, everybody's nice, cheering, happy to be here, enjoying that comfort food. It just can't get higher than that."

While no Blue Jays players have dined at the restaurant quite yet (key word, "yet," Dimitra emphasizes), a few have lent their names to specials at the restaurant.

The Springer Dinger, for example, is named after veteran George Springer, and includes four pieces of chicken, a truly staggering quantity of French fries, your choice of side, a bun and the restaurant's real claim to fame, John's famous (or maybe infamous) yellow gravy.

All of that, a quantity of food weighing roughly the same as a newborn child, comes in at just $15 before tax. 

In some ways, Dimitra says, being a small, independent, family-run institution in a neighbourhood that's in a seemingly never-ending state of change feels kind of like they are the Blue Jays.

"Sometimes we're a little bit of an underdog. New restaurants pop in, shiny, they have lots of Insta folders, and we're there trying to keep it old school. We keep it going," Dimitra says.

Indeed, just like the scrappy Blue Jays, onward Chick-N-Joy persists, bolstered by a fan base that will never, ever give up on them. And, hey, even if you, like me, don't watch baseball, Chick-N-Joy is still worth a stop.

Chick-N-Joy is located at 1483 Queen St. E.