Our 10 Favourite Chicken Shop Dates
As Chicken Shop Date prepares to end after 12 years, we look back at ten dates that helped shape Amelia Dimoldenberg’s awkward, chaotic and endlessly rewatchable interview series.
Chicken Shop Date was never supposed to become this big. It started with grime artists, fluorescent lighting and Amelia Dimoldenberg deliberately making people uncomfortable over fried chicken. Twelve years later, she has sat opposite some of the biggest names in music and film, turned awkward silence into an interview style of its own and somehow made a chicken shop one of the most recognisable sets on the internet.
Now the date is nearly over. Amelia has confirmed that Chicken Shop Date will end after one final run of episodes, bringing a format that started in 2014 to a close.
Before that happens, we wanted to go back to the dates that made us laugh, the ones that escaped the episode completely and the moments we still remember years later.
These are our ten favourites.
Kurupt FM
Kurupt FM’s 2017 appearance barely qualifies as a normal date, which is exactly why it belongs here.
Amelia is supposed to be meeting MC Grindah. Instead, DJ Beats comes along too, turning the whole thing into a third-wheel disaster before they have even properly started.
Grindah still carries himself like he is the most important person in the room. Beats hovers around. Amelia refuses to acknowledge that bringing your mate on a date might be strange.
It feels less polished than the episodes that came later, but that is part of the appeal.
Three people, a chicken shop and absolutely no attempt to make the situation normal.
Dave
Dave managed something few Chicken Shop Date guests have done: he forced Amelia out of the chicken shop.
He had a phobia of chicken shops, so their 2017 date had to move to an upmarket fried-chicken restaurant in east London instead. Amelia later joked about the problem of trying to date somebody who would not go anywhere near one.
That alone makes the episode feel different.
Dave is quiet and difficult to read, while Amelia keeps trying to pull something out of him. With the usual setting already gone, the awkwardness has nowhere to hide.
It is a Chicken Shop Date without the chicken shop, and somehow it still works.
Aitch
If there is one Chicken Shop Date that refused to stay inside the chicken shop, it is Aitch.
Their 2019 episode already had everything the format needed: insults, flirting and two people completely willing to keep pushing the joke. Amelia tells him he looks “a bit like a prawn”, Aitch gives as good as he gets, and the whole thing feels less like an interview than two people seeing how long they can keep winding each other up.
Then it kept going.
In 2022, Amelia appeared alongside Aitch in the video for “Baby”, with the pair playing out a relationship together across the visual.
The joke had escaped the episode. That is what makes Aitch’s date feel different from most of the others here. Chicken Shop Date normally ends when the cameras stop.
This one carried on.
Slowthai
Slowthai’s episode is here because the location does half the work.
His 2021 date was filmed at Troglodyte Bites, the warped fast-food setting connected to the visual for “VEX”. The fictional restaurant appears throughout that video as a grim, surreal fast-food spot full of increasingly strange details.
That flips the usual setup. Amelia normally pulls somebody into her strange little corner of the internet. This time, she walks into a set that already belongs to Slowthai’s visual language.
Then she acts like none of it is unusual. The tables, the food, the strange surroundings - all of it becomes part of the joke. Few Chicken Shop Dates are remembered because of where they were filmed.
This one is.
Jack Harlow
Jack Harlow does not spend his Chicken Shop Date trying to work Amelia out.
He starts flirting almost immediately. That changes the balance. Instead of Amelia slowly making somebody uncomfortable, Harlow keeps trying to meet her at the same level and push the conversation back at her.
His attempts at Britishness add another layer, including a pronunciation of Lucozade that becomes its own tiny moment. Harlow’s episode is not memorable because somebody loses control of the interview.
It is memorable because neither of them really has it.
Louis Theroux
Louis Theroux’s date produced something far bigger than the episode itself.
Amelia asks him about an old rap. He remembers it. Then comes “Jiggle Jiggle”.
The clip spread, the remix followed and suddenly a throwaway moment from Chicken Shop Date had turned into a track people were hearing everywhere.
That is why Louis makes this list. Plenty of guests have produced funny clips. Plenty have gone viral. Very few Chicken Shop Date moments became their own cultural thing.
This one did.
Central Cee
Central Cee’s date takes a turn when he starts asking about the wrong Dimoldenberg.
Amelia is trying to interview him. He wants to know about her sister. He asks how old Zoe is. What her type might be. Amelia quickly reminds him that he is already meant to be on a date with her.
Central Cee barely reacts. That makes it even funnier. The best bit is how little the moment needs. No huge joke, no big reaction, no obvious punchline.
Just Amelia realising her own date is enquiring about somebody else.
Paul Mescal
Paul Mescal arrives with the image of a charming, serious actor.
Amelia spends the episode slowly puncturing it. At one point, she tells him she has seen all his films. He looks impressed. Then she reminds him there are not actually that many.
It is brutal in the smallest possible way. That is the rhythm of their date: she gives him something resembling a compliment, lets him enjoy it for a second and then takes it straight back.
Mescal handles it well, which only encourages her. The episode is not chaotic. It is death by a thousand tiny digs.
Sabrina Carpenter
Sabrina Carpenter’s episode feels like two people who are both very comfortable being ridiculous.
The Hot Ones confusion gives Amelia an easy opening, but the best part comes later when she attempts her own version of one of Sabrina’s famous “Nonsense” outros.
Amelia gets most of the way through before running out of road. Sabrina immediately knows where the joke is heading and finishes it for her with a much dirtier final line. It turns what could have been a throwaway reference into one of the funniest exchanges of the episode.
That is why Sabrina works so well here. She does not sit back and let Amelia carry the joke. She picks it up and makes it worse.
Andrew Garfield
Andrew Garfield’s Chicken Shop Date starts years before he actually sits down in the chicken shop.
The red-carpet interviews came first. The flirting followed. Then the internet decided they needed an actual date. By the time Garfield finally appeared in October 2024, there was already a storyline waiting for them.
That could have ruined everything. Instead, they lean into it. Both know exactly what people want from the episode. Both know viewers are watching every pause and every look. Neither seems particularly interested in shutting the whole thing down.
It is probably the only Chicken Shop Date where anticipation became part of the format itself. The early episodes worked because nobody quite knew what Amelia was doing.
Andrew Garfield’s works because everybody does.
One Last Date
Picking ten was never going to cover it.
Billie Eilish, SZA, Cher, Jennifer Lawrence, Little Simz and plenty more could easily have made the cut. That is the strange thing about looking back at Chicken Shop Date: somewhere along the way, seeing almost anybody sat opposite Amelia in a chicken shop stopped feeling surprising.
The scale grew. The guests became increasingly ridiculous. The joke never really needed to.
Amelia still had the awkward pause, the question somebody probably told her not to ask and the ability to make a polished celebrity suddenly look like they had no idea what to say.
Twelve years later, the chicken shop is finally closing. There are still a few dates left before then. And after all this time, there is really only one question left.
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