We're more Victorian than the Victorians, who used to put pants on their lamb chops and call legs "limbs." Boneless chicken breasts avoid all the bluntness, avoid the intimacy, the savagery of tearing meat from bone with your teeth and fingers, and allow us to forget the origins of our food. (Remember Gary Larson's cartoon of the "boneless chicken farm" with those limp chickens lying all over the ground?)īoneless breasts are the epitome of modern protein: light-colored, bland-tasting, easy to eat, quick to prepare and-most important-not recognizable as formerly living creatures. It's the ubiquitous boneless, skinless breast. The bird responsible for the statistical rise in chicken-eating, though, is not golden-fried or roasted fowl. The Morning News Guide runs a separate restaurant category just for chicken-that's how popular chicken-eating has become. But everyone knows the point of the meal is the chicken. For the sake of something green, you're served a salad of teeth-achingly cold iceberg lettuce with a syrupy dressing. But it was a Sunday dinner menu, all the way: fried chicken, mashed potatoes, corn and biscuits. When we ate at Babe's, it wasn't for Sunday "dinner"-which is actually lunch-I think it was a Wednesday night (that would make it "supper"). You just eat whatever Babe fixes, and what Babe fixes is fried chicken. Everything is served family style-and there are no menu choices, either. You want chicken, you got chicken, now move along.īabe, in true matriarchal style, demands that you sit down as a family and enjoy your dinner. At Bubba's, the big deal is the drive-through-a very masculine approach. You know Bubba's place-the former filling station on Hillcrest that's been specializing in fried chicken for a dozen or more years. She was tiny, young, and sassy, with a clever comeback for every query or comment.Ībout half of our extremely extended family gathered around the table in Garland-grandfather at the head of the table, the baby balanced in his carrier on an upended high chair, the toddler in a booster chair, and a couple of in-laws in attendance to provide the necessary friction-all to eat a fried chicken dinner at Babe's.īabe, as I gathered from the menu and "press release" I was sent, is Bubba's better half. Our waitress was not one to be intimidated, however. Babe's is a family-style restaurant, so we descended on it in full-strength family style, which, frankly, can be formidable.
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