Original Recipe
If I were to ask you what food you miss most from your childhood, my hunch is that you would either answer immediately, or it would take you a minute to decide – not from lack of an answer, but from a wealth of options to consider. Homemade recipes, processed sack lunch staples, long-shuttered restaurant specialties, or discontinued chain offerings that long ago vacated their neglected corners of the backlit menu. There are flavors and, more importantly, moments that stick to us with conviction, with gusto, holding space in our minds where they can no longer, for one reason or another, hold space on our plates. Food is no exception from the current stranglehold that nostalgia has on our cultural imagination and market.
Of course, this is appropriate, as memory plays such an important role in our experience of food, of eating. It’s not just flavors and textures, recipes handed down over generations; it’s also chinaware and plastic bowls with children’s illustrations on the bottom to be revealed gradually as alphabet soup is dribbled away. It’s the way food catalyzes the capturing of an entire moment in a full-sensory memory. And, as with anything else, those memories become stories become memories of the stories become a reality unto themselves which we name things like “the good old days,” or “nostalgia,” and long to return to, not realizing that they never truly existed the way we think of them.
But still, the food was real. And there’s a potential, then, for food to serve as a special kind of time capsule. The question is whether we’re prepared for the reality that capsule opens up to us.
I was listening to a podcast recently where some comedians were reviewing Taco Bell. It’s my favorite podcast, Doughboys. As soon as you check it out, you’ll see that it’s absurdly on-brand for me. They review chain restaurants in earnest, punching up jokes and establishments rather than settling for the facile, self-deluded punchlines of “fast food bad” that the general population tends to deal in, often on our way to the drive-thru we hope no one catches us in.
As they’re assessing their Taco Bell visit, one of the guests brings up the point that he hasn’t been to Taco Bell since he was a child, some 30 years before, and that when he revisited it for the show, it tasted exactly as it did in his childhood. And everyone was torn on whether this was an asset or a liability for Taco Bell and other chain restaurants about which the same might be said. McDonald’s and Burger King of course were mentioned in similar veins.
On one hand, it’s nothing short of an astonishing feat that a restaurant might be able to maintain its practices of preparation with such consistency for such a long period of time, especially as some elements have fundamentally changed. McDonald’s especially made changes to their portions and some of their recipes in response to the criticisms leveled against them when Supersize Me released. And who could forget the “pink slime” debacle of their chicken nuggets. The same goes for Taco Bell and the press surrounding the contents of their taco meat. So to be able to create a product that tastes the same, that carries with it a kind of assurance and certainty that you know what you’re going to get, is an asset. However, the podcasters also expressed the general sense of disquiet that kind of consistency instills in them. It’s rare that we experience that kind of consistency, and to get it from a fast food taco doesn’t necessarily bring with it a nostalgic comfort, but a suspicion bordering on disgust.
As much as we long for the past, even in our food, do we truly want it? Is this another classic case of “be careful what you wish for?” After all, the market has seized the current fixation on the past and sought to capitalize on it by reviving some key objects of retro-culinary acclaim. They brought back Dunkaroos, those little cookies that you dip in frosting that the cool kids always had at lunch. And people decided that the revival wasn’t as good as the original. Same with Ecto Cooler, a flavor of Hi-C that promoted the original Ghostbusters that the company rereleased for the 2016 Ghostbusters. The same voices crying gimme gimme gimme, turned around and insisted it didn’t live up to their expectations. Thing is, they weren’t just expectations, they were memories – memories of a sugary drink with bright-colored packaging they had when they were children.
Yet, when confronted with something that truly does taste the same as it ever has like a Taco Bell cinnamon twist or a chicken mcnugget, we become suspicious and wonder if something is off just because it’s consistent. We open the time capsule and are disappointed to realize that all these years we’ve remembered everything that was buried in it. No surprises or waves of nostalgia. Disappointment in things being exactly as we knew them to be.
High school yearbooks are Necronomicon levels of foreboding. I’m lucky in that my high school didn’t give us space for senior quotes. I get to expel the sigh of relief that I don’t have to revisit whatever moody quotation I thought was deep at the time. Or maybe I would have chosen some cherry-picked Bible verse to serve as a reminder of my evangelical adolescence spent doing mental gymnastics around how I could be simultaneously so terrified of and so infatuated with God. The signatures and notes are arguably the most infamous feature of yearbooks, though. And one go-to platitude floats to the top. Well second-from-the-top. H.A.G.S. will always reign supreme, especially if it’s in a senior yearbook. Like, we’re about to embark on our journeys into adulthood, and the best you can do is the stock nicety of “Have a Great Summer”? Honestly hilarious in how impersonal it is.
But I always think of the yearbook message that ends with the plea to “never change.” It’s always so well-intentioned, but misguided. Of course they just mean that they like you how you are and enjoy their time with you, but it also implies that your existence is beholden to their experience of you. And that kind of sucks. And, as this food debate reveals, that desire may be misplaced anyway. Because the people we tell to never change are the same people that we might later turn our noses up at because they’re the same now as they were in high school; they never moved out, they still go to football games, they’re a Soundcloud artist between shifts at the only Quizno’s still in existence or sell essential oils as their own boss.
So I wonder what your response is to foods which taste the same now as they ever have. There’s an obvious affection for the Ratatouille-like sensation of tasting something that stirs a memory in you from your past. It is food’s unique ability to evoke and resurrect the people and places we love. That when we’re gone, our food can still carry our essence. And yet, the infectious nature of memory can threaten our present tastes. When I was a child, I put ketchup on everything. Not an uncommon practice. But I would eat foods I hated, like fries, just as a vessel to get the ketchup to my mouth. And I feel that memory and nostalgia can be much the same way, smothering the reality that lies underneath so that when we actually get a taste of those bygone moments and flavors, our palates are unprepared, disoriented.
For my part in the Taco Bell debate on Doughboys, I think it’s an asset that it tastes the same. I think it speaks well of our complex relationship with memory, sentimentality, and nostalgia. It’s easy to romanticize our memories of family recipes and homemade dishes. But that’s only a part of ourselves, and a part that we’re more than happy to be less than honest about. I think that’s ok. The mythology of our memories doesn’t make them any less beautiful. If anything, I think that’s what makes the more impersonal instances of that foodborne nostalgia, like the steadfastness of a Taco Bell crunchy taco or the drop of juice suspended in the cap of a Squeez-It, all the more valuable:
That world that lives in your memory is still real. And it’s still real, right here, right now.
The world that was and the world that is aren’t so far apart and aren’t so at odds as you may think.
Just like you.
Palmer’s Hot Chicken
Harmony is a rare gift in a discordant world.
It shouldn’t be taken for granted when, in a sea of chaos, incongruency, and violence, two elements coalesce rather than clash. It’s the realization of the hope expressed by some of the wealthiest among us when they assembled to produce the serenade “We Are the World” to promote ideals of cooperation, peacemaking, and, most importantly, to promote themselves. Still, there’s an innate desire in all of us to see two things combined. Perhaps it’s a way we cope with our own duality. Perhaps it’s a childlike inclination to see modeled for us a kind of reconciliation we can’t produce for ourselves. Perhaps Reese put peanut butter and chocolate together and we’re all still just riding that wave on a frenzied search for the next duo that can reach such lofty heights as Reese’s.
Hot chicken.
A dish which has deep roots in the American South, and whose origins rest decidedly in Black communities. Supposedly it was spawned as a revenge dish – a woman who knew her boyfriend was running around behind her back prepared him a fried chicken breakfast with an absurd additional amount of cayenne pepper in the breading. Rather than reject it and grapple with the virtues of accountability and fidelity, however, the dude was just like, “This is great!” and found a way to capitalize on it. So, a decidedly American story.
Hot chicken, often called Nashville Hot Chicken has met much mainstream success in the years and decades after its region-specific debut. Many chicken chains have adopted Nashville hot flavor profiles either as featured, seasonal offerings, or as permanent additions to their menus. However, as with most specialty items, the real play begins with establishments that focus especially on the product as the main course, not a gimmick to capitalize on a trend.
Fried chicken is one of my top 5 favorite foods, and I, in the words of Nick Wiger, am something of a heatseeker, so it only made sense to check out Palmer’s Hot Chicken, which opened in Dallas this summer. There’s no mistaking that Palmer’s is seeking to establish itself firmly in the Dallas food scene with a pandemic-friendly enclosed front patio with garage door walls and a to-go window attached to the interior’s bar. All of their copy is friendly, casual, and obviously written by and for millennials, commodifying their product as simultaneously a novelty and a time-honored cornerstone of the bitegeist (although they’re not yet ahead enough of the curve to know to use words like bitegeist). But how does that product stack up?
I had the Big Dark platter at Nashville heat (level 3 of a 4-level scale), consisting of 2 chicken thighs/legs and two sides. I selected collard greens and macaroni and cheese because I know that not all southern sides are created equal, and these two are foundations on which to build the house of your plate. The mac and cheese was better than accepted, creamy, tender, and cheesy, despite its lack of browning or crust on top. The greens were a bit more confounding as they were tangy and sweet, with very little juice. Not bad, especially as their signature bitterness played on the end of each bite, but it did feel like a departure from expectations, and I don’t imagine them evoking anyone’s family recipes, leaving the high praise of “just like Nana used to make” all but off the table.
The chicken, likewise, didn’t wow me the way I’d hoped. The elements were all there, with a very crispy exterior and heat to spare, with juicy and satisfying chicken. However, the spice blend left something to be desired, as heat was the only discernable feature. Heat, after all, is a sensation to accentuate the flavors of the food, and not a flavor in and of itself. It lacked complexity and depth, with the only semblance of layered taste coming from the signature pickle slice pinned to each piece – a single chip being far from sufficient for each massive side of chicken.
While this was a bit disappointing, it was just that: only a bit. The heat still let the chicken speak, which I imagine was their goal in keeping the hot flavor profile relatively single-note. And, I’m encouraged to revisit it and explore their other offerings, including their chicken tenders, white meat, catfish, and “Palmerized” top heat level.
3.75 out of 5
Top 5 Most Appetizing School Supplies
One of the hallmarks of adulthood is being able to identify what is and isn’t for eating. But one of the joys of childhood is having a sense of those guardrails, while maintaining a desire for inedible delicacies all the same. Here are some of those top contenders:
5) Crayons – For many, perhaps our first instance of defying the aromatic signals for our visual hopes. Slap a name like “mac n cheese” on the yellow-orange shades, and it’s like they were practically begging you to have a try. The satisfying snap of wax, combined with the smooth glide of the color on the page, the mystery of their texture always came to disappointing clarity the moment you attempted to chew.
4) Scented Markers – The inverse cousin of crayons, these invited you to have a lick, even when you knew that marker ink bore no appetizing features. Lollipops dyed our tongues blue, too. What was really the difference?
3) Pencil Grippies – It’s no wonder these always ended up in our mouths. The only point of reference we had for the squishy texture of pencil grippies was fruit snacks and other gummi treats. Combine that with bright colors and the translucency of the gel material, and you had all the makings of a favorite snack. These were made to be a choking hazard anyway. The least they could have done was scent them.
2) Pink Erasers – Reptile brain activated: Look same as bubble gum good for eat
1) Glue – Glue was a perfect storm of sensory confusion that created endless branching paths of possibility, all of which led to the stomach. The varied textures and forms presented it as a charcuterie board of potential: sticks, liquids, gels, all with different colors and gimmicks. It goes on purple but dries clear? All I see is a grape push-pop, baby. And the liquid would inevitably get on your fingers. Try to wipe it off, and now you’re dealing with that gross Kleenex residue. But what if it were finger-lickin’ good instead? All of these elements culminated in what appeared to be the largest printing on the packaging: Non-Toxic. That was the only greenlight any of us needed.