It’s hard to believe, but we’re up to the halfway mark in our yearlong fried chicken dinner tour!

For the sixth month, we’ve decided to head to a classic Italian restaurant in Toluca: Mona’s Italian Food. In addition to their homemade Italian food, they’re also known for their homestyle fried chicken, so of course we have to go and try it out.

Scroll on down to check out this month’s fried-up post!

My friends, Amber and Joe gave us this Fried Chicken mascot for this tour and he’ll be accompanying us on the rest of this tour! Thanks, Amber and Joe, I love him!

I decided to name him, Rubber Clucky and there he is in the car on the way to Mona’s in Toluca. I think he needs to get used to traveling in a car, he looks a little nauseous!

Here we are at Mona’s in Toluca, Illinois. This place has been standing tall on this corner since 1933! It’s quite the historical building and that neon sign is a classic!

Jeff and Tom posed below the sign and they’re leading the way in. I’ll get a proper photo of our fried chicken group soon as we get settled in!

There’s a nice, full bar that greets you as you enter in here, then you go through two doors and there’s the dining room. It looks very nice in here and they have a nice crowd for dinner.

And now for the proper photos of our fried chicken group, from the top: Jeff, Floyd and Tom. Great to see all of them and we all brought some big appetites for this month’s fried chicken feast!

Our pretty waitress for the evening is Brittany and here she is delivering us some beer and then she took our food order.

As you can see, Rubber Clucky has settled in at the table, but he still looks a little nauseous. Maybe it’s because we’re having some of his relatives for dinner!

We started off with two appetizers: The signature Mona’s Fat Pretzel, which is served with homemade cheese and marinara sauce and the Mona’s Sausage Bites which are served with three dipping sauces.

The appetizers were delicious and I especially loved the rich and tasty cheese sauce on the pretzel!

Here’s everyone digging in to the appetizers. Everyone really enjoyed them and now it’s time for me to run and take a few photos while the main course is being prepared.

There’s another dining room through this door and it’s large and very nice.

There’s vintage photos hanging all over the place and there’s two of them aalong with a Monas sign in the window.

Two framed newspaper articles about this legendary Toluca restaurant hang on the walls.

Meanwhile, back at our table…

Our main courses have arrived!

Here’s photos of our side dishes, both Jeff and Floyd got spaghetti, Tom ordered the seasoned grilled vegetables and I got the wild rice.

Here’s the star of the show, our fried chicken dinners!

The chicken was very crispy and you can read more about that in the review below. I was nicely surprised by the wild rice, it was the tastiest rice I’ve ever had, I really enjoyed it!

There’s everyone enjoying this months fried chicken dinners!

And, as always, Jeff wins the Clean Plate Award! I should get him an actual award one of these months! No one cleans the meat off the bones like Jeff!

Oh noooo, Jeff’s eating Rubber Clucky…stop that, we need him for next month!

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The Fried Chicken Dining Experience

Mona’s is a legendary Toluca restaurant and we had an enjoyable dinner there. The appetizers were fantastic, the service was fast and friendly and they’ve been serving hungry diners since they opened in 1933!

We’ll give them a solid three star rating on the dining experience.

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THE FRIED CHICKEN

The fried chicken was crispy and nicely cooked, however it was somewhat dry and a little on the bland side. We all wondered if maybe it had been sitting for a while in the kitchen.

It wasn’t horrible, but we all agreed we’ve had better, so we’ll give the fried chicken a two point three rating.