Fried Chicken Read online

  i won’t saddle you with statistics, like the fifty-eight percent increase in our nation’s Hispanic population from 1990 to 2000. I won’t burden you with the knowledge that, during the same period, Hispanic buying power rose from just over five percent to nearly ten percent of U.S. buying power. No, that would be boring. You know the impact of Hispanic tastes and pocketbooks each time you walk down the grocery store aisle and spot cans of nopalitos beside the green beans, bottles of tamarindo amidst the colas.

  Over the course of a year spent wandering the country, I’ve eaten—in addition to the Italian and Serbian fried chicken already discussed—Korean fried chicken in Baltimore, Vietnamese fried chicken in San Francisco, Indian fried chicken in Dallas, and Szechuan fried chicken in Minneapolis. More to the point, I’ve eaten Latin fried chicken at a Mexican bodega in Atlanta, at a white-tablecloth bôite in Chicago, and at a Cuban coffeehouse in Miami.

  The best Latin fried chicken I tasted was at New Caporal, a fast-food take-away in New York City where they marinate chicken in the garlic-and-citrus concoction known as mojo, deep fry it, and pile it atop an aerie of curlicue fries. (They even boast a holster-and-six-shooter-wielding mascot that recalls El Pollito.) Problem is, New Caporal, like the rest of these chicken purveyors, is singular. Each is a fluke, a conspiracy of talent and enterprise that somehow produces a transcendent piece of fried chicken.

  Pollo Campero, on the other hand, is no fluke. It is a corporation dedicated to consistency of product, to sameness of taste. In Latin America, where the company has nearly 200 stores, it sells chicken to parents by way of their children, who are, in turn, seduced by the Saturday-morning superheroes El Pollito and Super Camp. In the United States, Pollo Campero sells itself as an answer to KFC, a taste of home that all Latins can afford and that, if Pollo Campero has its way, all Latins will come to claim as their own.

  And therein lies their genius, for what Pollo Campero is truly selling to émigrés is a sort of pan-national pride: By the very act of eating this Latin product you are remaking your American experience on your own terms. And at a time when the majority of the line workers in the American poultry industry are Hispanic, in a day when salsa and ketchup do battle for primacy alongside tortillas and white bread, the market is theirs to seize.

  Latin American Fried Chicken LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA

  The smoky whang of adobo is essential here. It’s easy to find in most grocery stores. No whining: If I can find chipotles in adobo at the Kroger in my small whitebread Mississippi town, then you can find it where you live. (I buy the small cans of chipotles in adobo, drain the adobo, and save the chipotles for another use.) This dish was inspired by the fried chicken served by the Pollo Campero, born in Guatemala, and soon to be frying in a town near you.

  ■ 6 chicken leg quarters, cut into thighs and

  drumsticks

  ■ 2 cups cider vinegar

  ■ 6 tablespoons adobo sauce

  ■ 1 tablespoon salt

  ■ 1 tablespoon Mexican oregano

  ■ ½ cup cornflour (You can use fish fry, but if

  it’s seasoned, reduce salt accordingly.)

  ■ ½ cup all-purpose flour

  ■ 2 cups lard, or 2 cups shortening into which

  you mix about 3 tablespoons bacon grease

  (continued)

  Pour vinegar and then adobo sauce into a large glass bowl or pan and stir to combine. Place chicken in marinade and refrigerate for at least 12 hours and no more than 18. Mix salt, oregano, cornflour, and flour in a paper bag. Scoop lard or shortening into a large pot, and melt to a depth of at least 3 inches. Heat over medium-high until thermometer registers 325°. Lift chicken pieces one by one from marinade, allowing excess to drip off before tossing in the bag. Again shake off excess before slipping pieces, skin-side down, into oil. Keep temperature at 325° and fry 15 minutes, or until an internal thermometer registers 170° for dark meat, 160° for white meat. Remove white chicken before dark. Serves 6.

  Mojo-Marinated Fried Chicken NEW YORK (WITH A TASTE OF MIAMI)

  Here’s another Latin favorite. Mojo sauce, traditionally prepared with sour oranges (lime juice and an orange are used here), is the marinade of choice for many Cuban dishes. (If you’ve ever eaten a Cuban sandwich, mojo is the marinade that gives punch to the filling of roast pork.) Though I’ve eaten this take on fried chicken at ten or twelve different spots, this version owes its style to my recollections of the chicken fried at New Caporal in New York, and a panel-truck commissary parked a few blocks off Calle Ocho in Miami.

  ■ 1 chicken, cut into 8 pieces if less than

  3 pounds, 10 pieces if more than 3 pounds

  ■ 3 cloves garlic, chopped fine

  ■ 2 bay leaves

  ■ 2 cups lime juice, fresh squeezed

  ■ 1 onion, sliced thin

  ■ 1 teaspoon cumin, ground

  ■ ½ cup all-purpose flour

  ■ Peanut oil

  (continued)

  ■ 1 clove garlic, peeled

  ■ 1 orange, unpeeled and cut into 10 slices

  Combine chopped garlic, bay leaves, lime juice, onion, and cumin in a large bowl. Place chicken in the same bowl, submerge in marinade, cover with plastic wrap, and place in refrigerator for at least 8 hours and as many as 12. Remove from marinade and drain on a wire rack.

  Place flour in a paper bag and toss chicken in, a couple of pieces at a time. Pull chicken from the bag, shaking each piece very well so the barest dusting covers. Pour oil into a heavy and high-sided chicken-fryer or Dutch oven to a depth of at least 3 inches. Add garlic clove.

  Heat oil over medium-high to a temperature of 325° (leaving garlic in until it turns dark brown), and fry chicken for 15 minutes, or until an internal thermometer registers 170° for dark meat, 160° for white meat. Squeeze a slice of orange over each piece and place slice atop. Serves 4.

  Hunting and Pecking for Smoked and Fried

  have you ever eaten chicken that was barbecued, battered, and fried? Since I first tasted pork ribs prepared that way at Little Dooey’s in Columbus, Mississippi, I’ve been searching for a chicken analogue.

  At Stevie’s on the Strip in Los Angeles, they once smoked their birds before frying them, but quit because, in the words of the cashier, “liquid smoke got too expensive.” I plotted a trek to Simply Southern in Las Vegas, reputedly famous for “hickory fried chicken.” But when I phoned, the number had been disconnected. I made a return trip to AQ Chicken in Spring-dale, Arkansas, where I had once liked their “chicken over the coals.” AQ works the dish backward, frying and then char-grilling. This time around, my thigh tasted more acrid than smoky. I have yet to make it to Keaton’s in Cleveland, North Carolina, but I’m in no hurry, because I understand that, instead of smoking and then frying, they do nothing more than fry chickens and then dunk them in barbecue sauce.

  I’m a bit dispirited, yet I continue to query friends and colleagues. Most, when I pledge my unrequited love of smoked and then fried chicken, look at me like I’m crazy. Come to think of it, they look at me the same way when I pledge my requited love of fried chicken and waffles.

  SIX

  Of Wattles and Waffles

  i came upon many an odd dish while eating my way toward a theory of American fried chicken. But none seemed to stymie family and friends more than fried chicken and waffles. At first blush, the dish defies logic: savory fried chicken served atop, or sometimes alongside, battercake waffles drenched in butter and syrup.

  If this combination is new to you, if it seems novel, you are not alone. I did not experience my first dish of chicken and waffles until 1998, at Gladys Knight and Ron Winans’s Chicken and Waffles on Peachtree Street in Atlanta, Georgia. There I ate the “Midnight Train,” four jumbo wings and a waffle.

  Even today, many restaurants consider chicken and waffles to be so novel that they append to their menu instructions on how to consume it. One Ohio spot details an eleven-step process that dictates, among other intricacies, sprinkling hot s
auce on the chicken, sluicing syrup on the waffle, and spearing a bit of each with your fork.

  Chicken and waffles has infiltrated all manner of pop culture. Remember the Quentin Tarantino movie Jackie Brown, wherein Samuel Jackson’s character, Ordell, baits one of his flunkies with the promise of dinner at Roscoe’s Chicken and Waffles? Or the scene in Swingers where Mike and Trent and the boys caravan to Roscoe’s for a late-night feed? Or the faux commercial for Roscoe’s in the John Cusack satire Tapeheads?

  Well, neither do I, but legions of hipsters remember these scenes. What’s more, those hipsters—and their boho parents before them—have been wolfing down chicken and waffles for decades, maybe even a couple of centuries. Most pop culture references I chronicle above point to Roscoe’s Chicken and Waffles of Hollywood (established circa 1975) as ground zero for the phenomenon. Though I have no hard evidence to back my supposition, I believe that the combination may have been a fixture of the American table since the early years of our republic when Thomas Jefferson returned from France with a goose-handled waffle iron, and, by championing the treat, ushered in a kind of waffle craze.

  in an attempt to establish an earlier debut, I have a bit of corroboration. Sallie Creuzot of Frenchy’s Chicken in Houston told me that she grew up in Virginia, in the years leading up to World War II, eating a Sunday breakfast of fried chicken and waffles. Edna Lewis, the grande doyenne of African American cooks, writes in her first book that fried chicken was a popular breakfast dish of her youth. In The United States Regional Cookbook, published in 1939, the Southern section features a recipe for “Kentucky Fried Chicken” that is steamed until tender, batter-fried, and served with griddlecakes, grits, or—you guessed it—waffles.

  And then there are the near misses: In Dishes & Beverages of the Old South, published in 1913, Martha McCullough-Williams provides a recipe for waffles and advises that while syrup is appropriate, “it is profane to drench them with it—strong clear coffee, and broiled chicken are the proper accompaniments at breakfast.” And the unconfirmed rumors, like the one I heard about an edition of Emily Post’s etiquette guide that suggests bachelors use Saturday afternoon picnic leftovers or a bucket of takeout to accessorize a Sunday waffle brunch.

  Further afield are the Pennsylvania Dutch. In Sauerkraut Yankees, the esteemed historian William Woys Weaver argues that waffles were oftentimes the preferred ballasts for chicken dishes. While the Pennsylvania Dutch were more likely to eat creamed chicken atop their waffles, Will’s work does nothing but cement my theory that the pairing of fried chicken and waffles is elemental. Such thinking puts the dish in league with tearoom delicacies like creamed chicken on toast points and not too far removed from a farmwoman’s Sunday dinner of fried spring chicken with hoecakes or biscuits, served with all manner of jams and preserves, maybe even a jug of cane syrup.

  Jeffrey Steingarten, the erudite eater and author, exposed one of the more delicious threads of investigation. Herb, the owner of the five-site Roscoe’s chain, told Jeffrey that the key to understanding the sweet side of the combo lay in examining the historical affinity of biscuits and molasses. I found this insight intriguing, but, when I traveled to Los Angeles, could not gain access for further questioning. After my third call for an interview, Herb’s secretary said, “He’s a very busy man.” With apparent befuddlement over my passion and genuine pity for my plight, she added, “You’ll have more luck getting an interview with the President.”

  I can’t blame Herb. I must appear a madman, squandering my days, trying to find the alpha fried chicken and waffles cook. It’s a task with as many pitfalls as determining out of what tradition, from what peoples, came fried chicken itself.

  We do know this: the tradition of cooking in deep oil has probable West African antecedents. Figure in that much early American kitchen work was thrust upon enslaved Africans. Beyond that, tracing the origins of fried chicken is a frustrating exercise. Perhaps it will suffice to observe that, in the eighteenth century—while cooking for (and sometimes under the direction of) white slaveholders—women of African descent honed a dish we now know as fried chicken. And then just leave it at that.

  When it comes to fried chicken and waffles, however, clarity evades me. Part of the problem is that, the more I research, the more I uncover competing views: Hanibal Tabu, a Los Angeles restaurant reviewer, argues that chicken and waffles is the “traditional breakfast of Southern black folk who wouldn’t eat pork.” While that’s a bit dubious, Robb Walsh, dining critic for the Houston Press, suggests cannabis at the root of the phenomenon. “Like pretzels and chocolate ice cream,” he writes, it’s a “come-home-stoned, stand-in-front-of-the-refrigerator kind of concoction.”

  The Convention Visitors Bureau of Oakland, California (the city is home to at least two purveyors), refers to chicken and waffles as a Louisiana dish, their logic being, one assumes, that odd edibles must come from the land of paunce and turducken. Across the bay, the San Francisco Chronicle claims that Roscoe’s owes its culinary shtick to a spot called Will’s Chicken and Waffles in Harlem. Speaking of Harlem, Carl Redding, proprietor of Amy Ruth’s, claims that his grandmother, Amy Ruth Bass of Gordon, Alabama, taught him to cook and appreciate chicken and waffles.

  Most Harlem origin stories point to the now defunct Wells Supper Club, opened in 1938 by Joseph Wells, an icon of early-to-mid-twentieth-century pop culture. Nat King Cole held his wedding reception at Wells. Sammy Davis, Jr., and the Rat Pack slouched and drank there. Sidney Poitier owned a rib joint on the same block. Count Basie had a club next door. And if the stories I am told are to be believed, everyone seems to have subsisted on a diet of chicken and waffles, the signature dish of Wells Supper Club.

  But Wells Supper Club was, more than likely, just the Roscoe’s of another time, a place that popularized a dish already ensconced in the folk repertoire. Bunny Berigan, a hard-living trumpet player who died of cirrhosis at the age of thirty-three, cut a single, “Chicken and Waffles,” for Decca in 1935—three years before locals believe that Joseph Wells even opened his supper club. In other words, Wells—and in later years, Roscoe’s—probably had the same impact upon chicken and waffles that Hunt’s, merchandiser of the Manwich, had on the Sloppy Joe.

  In addition to the aforementioned Amy Ruth’s, many modern-day Harlem restaurants still sell chicken and waffles, including Miss Maude’s Spoonbread Too, Pan Pan Diner, Sugar Shack Cafe, and Hip Hop Chicken and Waffles. And we’re just getting started. Beyond the Hudson River, ShamDanai’s of Baltimore serves chicken and waffles. So does Jones in Philadelphia, a fieldstone-flanked living room posing as a restaurant. In our nation’s capital, B. Smith’s at Union Station serves chicken and waffles with onion gravy. At the Breakfast Klub in Houston, Marcus Davis and crew spike their waffles with cinnamon. And don’t forget the Motown Café in Universal City, Florida, where in addition to “Ain’t No Ham and Rye Enough” and “Marvelettes Motown Sampler” (a soulful pu pu platter) they offer “It Takes Two Chicken and Waffles,” described on the menu as a “traditional dish.”

  What restaurant will emerge as the next Wells or Roscoe’s? Until recently, my money was on Phil Davis, owner of the restaurant Phil the Fire in Cleveland, Ohio. He’s an ardent disciple of the tradition who got hooked on Roscoe’s Chicken and Waffles while a student at Stanford University and, once hooked, even journeyed to Harlem to sit at the feet of Joseph Wells’s widow, Elizabeth. Until he closed his restaurant in 2004, Phil envisioned dozens of Phil the Fire locations throughout the country and had begun promoting a new product, the Jake Waffle (named for the local baseball stadium, Jacob’s Field), for which he sautéed boneless breast strips, then baked them into a waffle and served them with tubs of hot sauce and syrup. Response was positive, and a patent was pending. And then, sadly, Phil the Fire was gone.

  Deep-Fried Buttermilk-Bathed Chicken

  CLEVELAND, LOS ANGELES, NEW YORK, AND POINTS BEYOND

  I’m usually a dark meat fan, but here breasts are best, for they allow you to more easily
slice off a bit of meat, spear a chunk of syrup-drenched waffle, and eat chicken and waffles in the cor- (continued)rect manner. The Tabasco is also important, for the heat and the tang play well off the syrup, resulting in a sweet-and-sour taste reminiscent of Szechuan and Cantonese Chinese cooking.

  ■ 6 chicken breasts, cut in half crossways

  ■ 4 teaspoons salt

  ■ 3 cups buttermilk (or, if you can find only

  cultured buttermilk, 2 cups plain yogurt,

  thinned with 1 cup whole milk)

  ■ 4 tablespoons Tabasco sauce

  ■ 1½ cups all-purpose flour

  ■ 3 teaspoons black pepper

  ■ 3 teaspoons cayenne

  ■ Peanut oil

  ■ 3 slices bacon, chopped

  Arrange chicken in one layer in dish or dishes. Sprinkle with 2 teaspoons salt. Pour buttermilk or thinned yogurt, spiked with Tabasco, over chicken. Marinate, turning often, for at least 4 hours and as long as 24. Combine flour, remaining salt, and pepper and cayenne in a shallow dish or bowl. Pour oil into a large pot to a depth of at least 3 inches. Add bacon. Heat over medium-high until thermometer registers 300°. Remove bacon when it browns and has rendered all flavor.

  Lift chicken pieces one by one from marinade, allowing excess to drip off before coating in seasoned flour. Again shake off excess before slipping pieces, skin-side down, into oil. Keep temperature at 300-325° and fry 12-15 minutes, or until an internal thermometer registers 170° for dark meat, 160° for white meat. Drain on a wire rack and turn your attention to the making of waffles as below. Serves 6.