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In a big city like New York, we sometimes need to be creative to bring our friends together. We don’t run into them at our kids’ little league games, we don’t see them in the checkout line at the grocery store, and few of us go to church, much less belong to parishes. If we want a congregation, we need to create it ourselves. Because my preaching tends toward the edible, I gather my friends with invitations like: “Why don’t you come over and we’ll case some sausage together” and “We’re making a heap of chicken fingers. Want to stop by?”
And so it was that Pouletpalooza began on a recent Wednesday night. Call us the Fried Chicken Five, the Cornbread Clan, Pollo Pilgrims. A group of friends needed an excuse to see each other, so we devised a plan. We would head to Harlem for a sampling of fried chicken.
At my apartment, a strategy session ensued. My husband, who would drive, wanted a detailed plan, including a driving route and a list of food to be sampled at each of three places we would visit. One friend, a Harlem resident, would navigate. He arrived with beer that would chill while we made rounds picking up the food. My brother-in-law, a visiting houseguest, was a lucky bystander who would come along for the ride.
On our way out the door the phone rang. Another friend, who had been sick and was now hungry for human interaction, invited us over for dinner. We knew better how to cure her ills. We redrew our route to make our first stop her West Village apartment. Bronchitis braved the frigid wet night and squeezed into the back with Brother-in-law, who thought he had come to New York just on business, and me.
Now we had our plan, but when I reiterated that for the benefit of Bronchitis–map out the driving route, call ahead, focus on fowl, limit the side dishes–one by one, my companions contributed their but-what-abouts. Corn bread? Mashed potatoes? Black-eyed peas? Candied yams? Mac and cheese? What’s that expression about too many cooks? I reluctantly said “fine” but insisted those be ordered judiciously.
Some of the soul food restaurants offer only set meals that include vegetables and rolls or cornbread, and they have varying degrees of patience to explain their systems over the phone. As we turned off 14th Street and onto the West Side Highway, Driver suggested I start thinking about placing our orders. Navigator seemed to delight in warning me that he’d been yelled at for not being prepared with his order in one fried chicken joint in the past and challenged me to be ready.
I then remembered what was involved in ordering fried chicken. I’d done it once or twice before and I needed to know what I was doing, but without menus I would struggle. Sure, I knew what I wanted: fried chicken. What I did not know was how each place would sell it to me.
I dialed the first number while all ears in the car listened and waited for me to humiliate myself. “Do you serve chicken a la carte?” I asked confidently. No response. Then, slightly anxiously I tried, “May I buy individual pieces of chicken?” I wasn’t getting through. Above the crackle of the cell phone static, I desperately yelled, “Can I buy a piece of chicken?” Finally, the answer came back “yes,” BUT….
Did I want a drumstick, a thigh, a breast? Or did I want a fried chicken sandwich? White meat or dark meat? Some chicken came with vegetables, some a roll or cornbread, and all at varying costs. I needed to think. I’d call back, I told them, after I made them recite a list of 15 vegetable choices. I laid out the options to the carload including the four vegetables I could remember and we decided to get those. Together we gauged the number of meals, leaving room for enough chicken from our perennial favorite, Charles’ Southern, the last stop on our itinerary. By now we were on 79th Street.
We referred back to the plan. Focus on chicken, limit the sides. I called back and placed our order. Next, an order placed at what would be our second stop went suspiciously smooth leaving us free to contemplate the unexplained traffic late on a Wednesday night and to debate the possibility of our eating any of the evidence from a recent police bust of a cockfight ring in the Bronx.
We turned off the highway and onto 125th Street, where a neon sign calls out “old-fashion’ but Good.” We pulled over to the curb. Brother-in-law kept the car running, Driver got out to attempt some surreptitious shots with the digital camera. (They would later be deleted when I dropped the camera on the floor upon arriving home with three bags of chicken in tow). The rest of us went in to get
the chicken.
M&G Diner has the right amount of shabbiness balanced with a touch of warmth that makes you want to linger and consider becoming a regular. Brown, paneled walls and windows that look out onto the street enclose the diner on two sides and a long counter on the other side displays cakes under worn plastic domes. But we had a schedule to keep. While we paid for our chicken, I asked the women behind the counter if they made their own cake. They laughed and said, “We’re too tired to make cake.”
Back in the car, we took in Harlem, up dark boulevards in traffic and across streets that begged for busier sidewalks. We broke the laws with the locals, pulling u-turns and accelerating through lights as they turned from yellow to red because, as Driver asserts, yellow is just another shade of green. We jaywalked our way into Amy Ruth’s Home Style Southern Cuisine.
The imposition we felt at walking through the sit-down restaurant to the inconveniently placed register was quickly assuaged by four people asking us if we needed help. These people were not tired, they were happy to see us and eager to serve. Their menus feature photos of celebrities, civil activists and politicians who have posed with the owner on their visits and, on this night, every table was full.
Our food was placed on the counter and I declined an offer to look through the order before it was meticulously packed. My amusement at this offer was tempered when the smiling cashier rang up our total. I attempted to quickly scan the menu to confirm we had indeed spent $47.09 on fried chicken. Not immediately finding the chicken on the menu, I was informed by the nice woman behind the counter that we had ordered off the menu. I wondered, had we arrived or simply been duped?
Growing hungrier by the moment and feeling unexpectedly light-in-the-wallet, we climbed back into the car. Across the backseat, fried chicken warmed the laps of Bronchitis, Brother-in-Law and Navigator. Limited elbow room prevented Bronchitis from breaking through the plastic knots of the bag that held the cornbread. With our palates watering and space tightening, the intellectual quotient of the conversation waned. For the rest of the drive to 151st Street we debated topics like whether or not eating take-out in the car is an acceptable practice and whether the Rucker court on 155th Street has a better pick-up basketball game than its downtown counterpart, the Cage, on West 4th Street.
At Charles’ Southern Style Kitchen on 151st Street, it’s an easy pull over and a quick stop. Brother-in-law and I huddled in the take-out storefront. We averted our focus from one worker who sat on the floor tinkering with a refrigerator vent and we concentrated on our next meal. Behind the counter, our chicken–mostly thighs–and buttery cornbread was packed in a box wrapped in foil. We paid an agreeable sum–$20 total. Outside, rain streamed down the glass window through which Navigator and Driver snuck more photos capturing anxious patrons. Bronchitis, weary and famished, stayed in the car.
As we hightailed it back downtown, I extricated a piece of cornbread from a Charles’ bag and divvied it up, just to tide us over. The chatter in the car slowed and the lights of the buildings gleamed off the wet road. The scenery, so novel from a car, kept us content until we reached home.
Driver and Navigator parked the car while the rest of us laid out the spread. Candied yams had spilled all over the mashed potatoes and a few pieces of chicken, and we found out the error of our way with Amy Ruth’s. Pulling the chicken from the bags, we realized that we had ordered chicken for twelve.
The parkers arrived, we passed around the beer, threw on James Brown and took our seats.
We made some conclusions (it’s best not to consider too closely exactly what part of the chicken you are eating) and we decided on our favorites (Charles’ is best piping hot, Amy Ruth’s stands up to the cold). In the end, everyone agreed for next time to remember: limit the side dishes. Pouletpalooza is about the chicken. Well, maybe it’s about a little more than the chicken. It was a cold winter night and we were home sharing a meal. We were happy, we were warm and we were together. The chicken tasted just fine. Amen to that.
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