Fried Chicken Read Online Free

were sitting alongside Croats and Hungarians and Slovaks. Their points of origin were myriad. Their love of fried chicken brought them to the same table. And in a curious way, fried chicken proved a substantive and symbolic part of their rebirth as polyglot Americans.
    Imitators emerged quickly. Another family of Serbs, the Milichs—who had worked the kitchen and floor at Belgrade Gardens—opened Hopocan Gardens on Hopocan Road in 1946, then served virtually the same chicken, sauce, coleslaw, and potatoes. Like the Toplaskys, they were recently immigrated Serbs. A third Serb, Mary Marinkovich, opened White House Chicken in 1950, and was soon followed by—among other pretenders to the throne—Orchard Inn, Western Star, Terrace Gardens, and The Flagpole.
    Today, four of Barberton’s old-line chicken dinner restaurants survive: Belgrade Gardens, Hopocan Gardens, Village Inn, and White House Chicken. With the possible exception of Belgrade Gardens, all are best appreciated as linoleum-and-leatherette warhorses, glorified cafeterias that are long on value but short on decor. Perhaps as a consequence, the chicken dinner houses of Barberton do not garner the respect they deserve. In a way it’s their own fault, for these restauranteurs have been in the business so long that they are blind to all: their eyeglasses are streaked with lard, their dining-room windows smudged with flour.
    one retired chicken man tells me that, a couple years back, Mayor Randy Hart of Barberton suggested that the local reputation for fried fowl was a “stigma” that the community should shed. Barberton was once a workingman’s town, but the match factory and the sewer tile kiln and the rubber plant and the boiler factory have all closed. It’s now a town scratching about for an identity, a town where the fans of opposing basketball teams mock the Barberton High boys by wearing chicken buckets on their heads. Sadly, it’s now a town where such pranks hurt—not because the city’s fried chicken heritage hints at some shared underlying foible of Barberton folk—but because the city lacks the vision and mettle to celebrate what distinguishes this burg from thousands of others in Middle America.
    That realization gets me down. But it also gets me eating. As a gesture of solidarity, I pledge that, for the remainder of my visit, I will eat not two but three meals a day of Barberton chicken. I even deign to eat at one of the newfangled franchises.
    And what do I divine? Halfway through my bacchanal, I decide—just as I did at the Chalfonte—that all Barberton chicken tastes absurdly simple, almost ascetic. When I ask the man or woman on the street why Barberton chicken tastes so good, I hear no talk of secret spice mixes, no discussion of proprietary marinades or breading mixes. And I find comfort in that.
    I get similar non-responses from the restauranteurs. Each one I meet, from Sophia Papich, daughter of the Topalskys, to Dale Milich, proprietor of the Village Inn, admits that since most every proprietor is related by blood or marriage or employment history, the chicken recipes and techniques vary little from house to house.
    About technique, I’m told: First you roll the chicken in salted flour. Then you dip it in egg wash. Then you roll it in bread crumbs. Finally you drop it in roiling lard, where it cooks until done.
    When we talk philosophy, each restauranteur sketches out the same three tenets: True Barberton chicken is fresh, never frozen. (Most birds are raised by downstate Amish farmers and were pecking about the barnyard a couple of days previous.) True Barberton chicken is seasoned with nothing but a modicum of salt. True Barberton chicken must be cooked in lard, for a great crust requires liquid swine.
    And it is to this last tenet that I cleave. Among a certain circle of chicken house connoisseurs, arguments ensue over whose hot sauce is the liveliest, whose coleslaw is the