I went. Now, for better or worse, I am different. Or am I?
To give the short story: I went to Blue Ribbon Fried Chicken and ordered a thigh and a breast. I took these pieces of meat to a park and sat down, and I ate them. First the thigh. It had a reasonably good crust and was reasonably somewhat a little sometimes flavorful. There were certain portions of the meat that had a decent amount of salt, but overall it was not a well-salted poultry. Then the breast. It was even less seasoned than the thigh, and overall not extremely flavorful. It wasn't a terrible fried chicken experience, but it wasn't a strongly good one. It was a fine one. Perhaps slightly better than fine.
But then I began to obsess over this, and I decided I needed to do a taste test, so I ordered 50 thighs, breasts and wings. Then I went to various other fried chicken establishments like Kentucky Fried Chicken, the Dutch, Bobwhite Counter and Popeye's. I did various analyses, some blind, some double blind, some triple blind, and I used different judges with different backgrounds and preferences, and then I repeated the test at different times of the day to account for sub-par batches, etc. I will be publishing a tome later this year to lay out in as much detail as possible the variations and reactions and my theories for why Judge One liked a particular fried chicken more than Judge Three but less than Judge Seven, although 4 hours later Judge Six liked a particular fried chicken equal to or greater than Judge Twenty-Three. The short answer can be summed in the following equation: Xh^7 + 2(3) * 24 = pG - G(23 + 2).
So yes, I have yet another fried chicken experience under my belt. But the quest for the fried chicken which will fill my soul continues.*
*Actually, I had the fried chicken which filled my soul in Louisiana last year, but if I were to admit I fulfilled my life's work, then there would be nothing else to do or nothing else to write about in these chronicles, so I act as if my quest is incomplete for the sake of show. Most things in life are like this, anyway.
