Taste halal fried chicken with Jordanian spices at 4 Charlotte restaurant locations
Late afternoons are hopping at US Fried Chicken’s newest Albemarle Road location, a refreshed space with new decor and colorful signage splashing deals and specialty dishes outside every window.
As the 2 p.m. lunch crowd floods in to the restaurant in the Eastland Promenade shopping center — dressed in all manner of sweat pants and business casual — co-owner Mohammad Alamreen repeatedly pops up from his seat to greet familiar faces. He shake hands and chats up the crowd while fellow co-owner Mohammad Alweesi fields calls.
The fast-casual halal restaurant serving up freshly fried chicken, along with a large selection of hearty American fare and Mediterranean favorites, has been quietly expanding across Charlotte over the past few years.
Now, US Fried Chicken has grown to four Charlotte locations. And if you haven’t tried it, now’s the time.
Alweesi and Alamreen started out in November 2019, taking over an existing US Fried Chicken restaurant on West Sugar Creek Road and transforming it from a struggling spot to a thriving local chain. But the Jordanian immigrants’ story really began with a chance interaction about a decade earlier.
Chance meeting leads to partnership
Like many immigrants, Alamreen followed family — his uncle — to follow his dreams. He left Jordan in 2010 and settled in Charlotte, where he finished his schooling.
A year earlier, Alweesi had set out from Jordan for the United States himself, forging a similar path.
“We grow up, and America is kind of the dream country to live in — the most opportunity you can have. Jordan is a small country,” Alweesi said. “Jordan doesn’t have that opportunity at all. If you’re not born with money, you’ll be struggling to find a way to make a living there.”
While en route to his new life, Alweesi’s flight from Jordan was delayed, and he missed his connection to his original destination, San Francisco. But an extra long layover in Chicago bought him time for a life-changing twist — meeting a guy who used to work for Alamreen’s uncle.
That layover interaction set off a series of events that brought Alweesi and Alamreen together after Alamreen’s arrival in Charlotte, where his uncle had made his home and a wide network of connections.
Eventually, the younger newcomers found themselves working nearby each other on the same Beatties Ford neighborhood street, where they got to know each other over the next several years.
“Me and him were always talking about starting a new business, a new life,” Alweesi said. “The money we had at that time, it wasn’t enough to start on our own. We just kept working hard to improve ourselves and our language — didn’t even speak English yet.”
US Fried Chicken
Years later, a business connection from Alweesi’s day job eventually led the pair to take over a restaurant whose owner was looking to sell — US Fried Chicken on West Sugar Creek Road.
“We didn’t know any information about restaurants,” Alamreen said.
But in November 2019, Alweesi and Alamreen dove in, determined to succeed.
A few months in, they found that the quiet restaurant tucked right at the edge of the Derita/Statesville neighborhood — which had been around for eight years — wasn’t covering the bills. And two of the three employees held over from the previous owner had quit.
“They didn’t like our way how to run the business,” Alweesi said.
Then the pandemic hit, along with panic about how to make good on their business loan and feed their families.
Alamreen said he took Alweesi aside and said, “We have to work on the business. It’s not getting enough traffic.”
So they set about expanding the menu, trying to entice new customers to come in.
A new menu changes everything
The first thing the owners added to the US Fried Chicken lineup was New York-style plates with shawarma chicken over rice, drizzled with garlic white sauce. Alamreen had seen long lines of New Yorkers lined up for the dish on a trip there. And although it’s not actually common in the Middle East to dress their dishes with the sauce on top, they gave it a try — and found it was a hit.
“Americans like saucy food,” Alweesi said.
Alweesi and Alamreen also tackled things like the sign outside the building, which hadn’t lit up in a while. Once it was fixed, nighttime customers realized the store was open.
Word spread as customers began sharing their experiences on social media. And the restaurant’s offerings grew, too. Kebobs, falafel and other tastes from back home helped bring people in the door.
“I grew up seeing my mom and dad make them,” Alweesi said. “I just had to write down the recipes and share with the chef to build a menu out of it.”
The strategy paid off.
“Adding stuff to the menu made a big difference — 25-30 percent of customers come in just to buy that,“ Alweesi said. “Some customers, they just order the wings. Some customers just order the sauce — a whole bottle to keep at home.”
Even so, fried chicken is still at the root of the restaurant’s fan base.
“Customers are smart. … Meat is meat, but how to enhance meat with flavor,” is another matter, Alweesi said, describing how each step matters in making the hand-breaded chicken. Together, he and Alamreen worked to tweak the recipe, using seasonings imported from Jordan.
“The way we cook it, the times we cook it, the farms we buy the chicken from — the chicken must be halal,” he said, which describes how the animal is processed according to Islamic law.
What to expect
Aside from the chicken boxes, wings and strips that US Fried Chicken is named for, you’ll find 19 flavors of wings including Mango Habenero, Tangy Carolina and Honey Old Bay.
Subs, fried fish and chicken sandwiches, salads and seafood plates are also on the menu — all of which are halal. The Jamaican beef patty is, too, along with the rest of the restaurant’s lineup.
“I’m a good cook at home,” said Alamreen, who likes to read recipes and has a passion for the work. (His favorite thing on the menu? The fried chicken, of course. Alweesi goes for the kebabs with chicken or lamb.)
A lengthy list of side dishes includes cheese fries, potato salad, potato wedges, okra, coleslaw, salad and mac and cheese. And that’s not all. There are several varieties of cake, plus sweet potato pie and bean pie, a traditional Muslim-American dessert, to finish off your meal.
Canned and bottled are available from a grab-and-go cooler near the counter.
Quick expansion
As the new restaurateurs got their footing underneath them, Alweesi and Alamreen began looking for opportunities to expand their business. It didn’t take long.
A year after taking over the Sugar Creek restaurant, a location near UNC Charlotte came open and they grabbed it.
A third spot — a former Bojangles location — followed at the uptown Charlotte Transportation Center in October 2022. The latest addition to the restaurant lineup, an Albermarle Road location that was once a Chinese restaurant, opened in June.
Even with four restaurants in operation, the owners aren’t strangers to the regulars. And folks are flooding in from surrounding areas such as Gastonia, Hickory and High Point — and telling their friends.
“We have a schedule,” Alweesi said. “In the morning, we do the shopping, and in the afternoon, we do the tour. And in evening, we close at one of those locations. Customers like to see us — they know us, they like us. They expect to see us once or twice a week.”
Now that US Fried Chicken has become a fixture in the community, the owners have made sure to give back as well — to churches and mosques, through back-to-school benefits and holding a food drive.
“We’re blessed, and we have to bless more people,” Alamreen said. Alweesi agreed, saying, “God gave us more than we expected, and we felt like we had to give back.”
And they’re not done yet. They plan to continue expanding with a new location each year, and somehow — in their spare time — have worked up plans for another new concept with catering in mind. Their grilled and rotisserie chicken brand is expected launch sometime within a year.
“We love what we’re doing,” Alweesi added, noting that he goes in even on his days off. “This is my true story — my partner’s true story.”
US Fried Chicken
Location: 605 North Tryon St., Suite Z, Charlotte, NC 28202
Location: 2823 W Sugar Creek Rd, Charlotte, NC 28262
Location: 310 East Trade St., Charlotte NC 28202
Location: 5600 Albemarle Road. Suite 800, Charlotte NC 28212
Cuisine: American, Mediterranean/Middle Eastern, Zabiha halal
Instagram: @us.friedchicken
