Fried chicken facts and menu sent to Chef Carl Wise Aug 29, 2016.
The Coon Chicken Inn restaurant chain, founded in Salt Lake City in 1925, rarely makes an appearance, though it flourished for almost 20 years. It merits a look, if you can bear to: the restaurant’s formula was unequivocally racist. A staff of black waiters served fried chicken to a predominantly white clientele in a room filled with the restaurant’s hallmark logo, a grotesque cartoon of a smiling black man wearing a bellhop’s hat. Menus, toothpicks and napkins all bore the caricature, and customers entered by walking through the red lips of a gigantic plaster version of the Sambo-like logo.
There have been claims that Col. Harland Sanders ripped off the KFC recipe from an African American woman by the name of Mrs. Childress and paid her $1200 dollars in back pay. Sanders’ marketing strategy was completely different from the Coon Chicken Inn, instead plastering his restaurants with a White face and an antebellum South aristocratic tinge “Colonel.”
KFC is the second largest franchise in the world and is now worth $15 billion in sales. Sanders company makes billions off a food African Americans used just to survive, and have been made a mockery of because of it ever since … and the rest is history.
Edna Lewis from Virginia.
Waiter carriers, women that sold fried chicken, cakes, coffee, fruit and hard boiled eggs at the train tracks from VA through Louisiana and beyond …
My Fried Chicken story …
I am a Proud Creole. Which in my case means we are Black, French, Portuguese, Italian, Japanese-Polynesian, Indo-Caribbean, Mexican and three types of Native American. I come from prolific food people. Before, during and after American Slavery (1691) the Black arms of my family have always been elbows deep in food. No matter what Profession we’ve chosen we all are proficient in some food skill. It is because we owe our American Dream to Food—prize game, nets of gulf shrimp, gators/swamp game, fish from every ocean, fine French pasties & down home baked goods, deep pit BBQ, hostessing/ party food, spirits, tamales, and four kinds of Fried Chicken …
Fried Chicken was the most revelatory, and game changing. The regal genius and creativity under the bright Toques of my Great Mamman and Great Auntie’s heads led them to FRY the way to Free Papers for Our family. One by one, until the Emancipation. Spicy Fried Chicken, warm buttermilk biscuits and a myriad of sweets sold in the streets of mostly Louisiana and Texas, and from every railroad from Virginia to San Francisco.
This Fried Chicken Feast is a September Honey Child Tradition to honor that Truth & both of my Grandmother’s Birthdays. Ivy on the 4th Wilma on the 21st.
The menu is Creole Fried chicken in the style of Wilma Jean (spicy Creole) and for my Granny Ivy’s selection (Traditional Texas style) Sister Paige style (my favorite cook/hostess at the church.)
Miss Wilma Jean, Mother Ivy, and Hippy Style (Naked & Gluten Free) Fried chicken.
- Smothered green beans — Fresh snapped green beans simmered low for a while in a Trinity blessed smoked pork broth with red potatoes and topped with crispy shallots.
- Church Lady Macaroni Salad — Small pasta shells with the Trinity, whatever sweet house pickle, and a creamy Devilled Egg Dressing.
- THE Broccoli Salad — Cold chopped Broccoli, Dried Cranberries & Dried Black Cherries, Sweet Onion, Smoked Pecans, and a Tangy Raspberry Kombucha dressing.
- Creamy Cheese Dinner Grits — Stone Ground Organic Grits swirled with a blend of local cheeses.
- Buttery Roly — Our Signature soft, sweet, and buttery yeast roll.
- Creole Deb Cupcake — Bourbon & Brown Butter roasted sweet potato cake with Tipsy Cream Cheese Frosting.
- My Blue Ribbon Peach Cobbler — In Texas, Michigan, & Nevada I have won 3 1st place State Fair Ribbons for Peach Cobbler taught to me by My Great Grandmother Elsie.
