#16   ALABAMA – Chicken and Waffle Whiff

Anthony Bourdain:  “I like chicken and I like waffles but I don’t understand them together.”
Questlove:  “You don’t want your food integrated?”

-                  -  CNN’s  Anthony Bourdain’s Parts Unknown – Miami

Chicken and Waffles have recently become a trendy  thing in Washington DC as well as in other major urban areas.  I agree with Bourdain. I like chicken and I like waffles but what is the appeal of eating them together? In Alabama, I got my chance to find out.

Warehouse Bakery & Donuts
Fairhope, Alabama

AMBIENCE:  The Warehouse Bakery & Donuts has only been open less than a year. It is located in a refurbished building that I could intelligently guess was once a warehouse. (Put me on Jeopardy!). The room is large and is presented as, what I would term, warehouse chic – lots of brick, industrial lighting, and a shiny cement floor. In the front were two large garage style doors which were open on this warm, sunny day.

We ordered our food at the register, went to the coffee dispensers, filled up, and then found a table. Next to us was a table filled with five or six chronically gifted men discussing Bama football, how the fish were biting, and who had what malady.

5 out of 5 stars.

FOOD:  So there it was, staring at me from the menu; chicken and waffles or in this case waffle. The restaurant had named it “Fry Fry Chicky Chick and Waffle”, a cute name for maybe an ugly idea. Fried chicken and waffles became prominent in the 1930s, when all-night diners in Harlem NY started serving the dish to the jazz musicians coming off their gigs at three or four in the morning. The combination worked, no doubt, because these guys were high as a kite and craved both breakfast and dinner. 

The almighty internet was unable to answer why this particular combination of foods evolved and not some equally as bizarre combination like pancakes topped with macaroni and cheese or catfish on french toast.

The Warehouse’s rendition of fried chicken and waffle came with whipped Sriracha butter and Alabama cane syrup.

I was faced with a number of options:

1) I could eat the chicken with the Sriracha sauce separately from the waffle with the syrup.

2) I could eat the chicken covered with syrup separate from the waffle spread with Sriracha.

3) I could take a little piece of chicken with Sriracha and a little piece of waffle with syrup and eat       them as one bite.

4) I could just pour the syrup over the whole thing and go at it.

Trying to establish some common ground for the chicken and waffle I chose option number four. It wasn’t very good. The fried chicken tasted like the oil in the fryer had not been changed in at least a week. The waffle tasted a bit stale. The syrup was good but couldn’t save the main ingredients.

The Healthy One ordered the Warehouse granola. On the granola scale she gave it a 7 out of 10.

2 out of 5 stars

COFFEE:  Finally! A great cup of coffee was served in the South. It certainly helped that Fairport Coffee Roasters was in the back room.

5 stars out of 5

SERVICE: The staff was helpful and had their act together taking orders and delivering food.

COST: $20.48 with tax.

A FEW WORDS ABOUT FAIRHOPE: 

Fairport has a population of about 16,000 and is one of the most rapidly growing towns in Alabama. It reminded me of an affluent Coastal California town if you substituted Mobile Bay for the Pacific Ocean. The beautiful central business district is filled with boutiques, art galleries, and restaurants. Flowers abound in public spaces. A large park follows the Mobile Bay shoreline giving walkers and bicyclists great views of the diving pelicans.

Fairhope was established in 1894 by a group from Des Moines, Iowa who wanted to establish a colony based on the social and economic theories of Henry George. Remember him from your Economics 101 course? He is most famous for believing that people should own the value they produce themselves, and that the economic value derived from land should belong equally to all members of society. The government should finance all of its projects, he argued, with proceeds from only one tax. This single tax would be on the unimproved value of land—the value that the land would have if it were in its natural state with no buildings, no landscaping, or other improvements. 

The Fairhope Single-Tax Corporation still operates, with 1,800 leaseholds covering more than 4,000 acres in and around the current city of Fairhope. It is one of two single tax colonies remaining in the United States (the other is in Arden, Delaware).

BURN THOSE BREAKFAST CALORIES OFF:

We hiked the alligator trail in Fontainebleau State Park, Louisian but only saw squirrels. We also did a five mile walk through Fairhope and along Mobile Bay.

November 2, 2016

NEXT UP: Florida