As a fine dining lover, I am, by definition, a poor dining hater. Indeed, I judge others when they make bad, mindless eating choices. I can tolerate the comfort of a fast-food burger or the abbondanza of a Vegas breakfast buffet. But I cannot forgive you for ordering chicken.
You know how eaters without descriptive abilities say that something they’ve never had “tastes like chicken?” That’s because chicken tastes like nothing. It’s all texture, no flavor. Picky eaters often whine that a food is too gamey or fishy. Not once has a human accused a dish of being too chicken-y.
Chicken breast is the default meal at fundraisers because no one can object to it. It is the Bruno Mars of meats. There is so little pleasure in eating chicken that no religion has bothered to ban it. If you told your priest you were giving up chicken for Lent, he would assume you meant choking it.
Like so many chicken apologists, my lovely wife Cassandra argues that “chicken is versatile.” By which she means that it can go with many sauces and dishes. This is the same argument that allowed blue jeans to destroy fashion. Chicken is versatile in the same way that mannequins are. They’re easy to dress up but you have to be a real weirdo to want to fuck them.
Is Nashville Hot Chicken Sandwich delicious? I guess. But deep frying something and pouring hot sauce on it sounds like something you do to a food once it goes bad. It’s like trying to win a debate over stale white bread by bringing up French Toast.
I once went to a secret wine dinner the night before the Pebble Beach Food & Wine event. We were escorted by police motorcycles to an empty beach house, where, for $2,000 a seat, (and a required magnum worth between $5,000 and $30,000), we ate a meal prepared by both Thomas Keller and Walter Manzke. Several diners complained that they would have rather have had roasted chicken to better show off their Henri Jayer Burgundies. They were annoyed that Keller and Manzke’s exciting bites competed with their wine. If it were socially acceptable, wine guys would order tofu.
Worse yet, Americans prefer the least flavorful part of the least-flavorful meat, the chicken breast. Now, I like white culture. I enjoy wearing pink slacks, sipping a Pimm’s cup, and saying “Looks like I just missed the rush!" But chicken breast is too white. In 2023, the U.S. sent more discerning nations more than 7 billion pounds of dark meat. In return they shipped us 60 million pounds of tasteless white meat. This is the only crappy trade deal Trump should be worried about.
What’s wrong with eating the Wonder Bread of meats? It’s that, unlike with Wonder Bread which cannot be destroyed, you have to kill a chicken. Killing animals is immoral. But far more immoral is killing animals that you don’t really enjoy eating. If I had to hunt for my meat, I might occasionally shoot a wild boar or a duck. I’d get about four steps into chasing a chicken before I realized that pot pie isn’t worth looking like such an idiot for.
