Fried Chicken (6 page)

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 sauce 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.

 

 

the marriage of salty and sweet isn't newfangled. Nor is it singular. Fried chicken drizzled with honey is the dish of record at Nick's Family Restaurant in Kingsport, Tennessee, where they pressure-fry chicken and set tables with bear-shaped honey dispensers. Al's Chickenette of Hays, Kansas, considers honey pots de rigueur. The Kennon House in Gas-burg, Virginia, serves fried chicken with a single packet of honey, but if you ask for three they'll oblige.