[thekremlin]

CHICAGO DIVISION:

#1: Harold's Chicken
I'd been hearing about Harold's for years, and taste-testing dozen's of my father's failed attempts at replicating the sauce. Never achieved. Then in 2004 I had the privilege of living right behind Kimbark Plaza, on 53rd and Kimbark. Kimbark Plaza had everything you want if you're a desperately broke college student living in an apartment called "The Speakeasy." It had a decent grocery, a laundromat, a decent family-style restaurant to take your girlfriend on a "fancy" night out (read: $30 for two dinners). It had a liquor store that didn't ID that often. And it had Harold's, The Chicken King. You order through a speaker mounted in plexiglass, and your order is put on a rotating plate and spun around. His Majesty Harold is no fool. You put $3.77 under the plexiglass. You buy a grape or raspberry soda for 75 cents from the machine. You open the bag. My regular order: half-dark, hot sauce, extra hot sauce, pepper, extra bread, and a jalapeno. The chicken, 4 pieces, piled on top of greasy fries. The sauce is perfect. The recipe, still unknown. Half of the fries eaten by hand, dipped in the extra hot sauce, the other half rolled up with the bread for a fry sandwich. The bread, whitebread, has soaked up the grease and the hot sauce, and might be the best part of the whole meal. The jalapeno, eaten at the end, was just masochism. People who order catfish instead of chicken should be treated with disdain. NOTE: A sommelier would undoubtedly recommend a bottle of Boone's Farm Apple Wine to accompany this meal.

#8: In my first year working in Chicago, post-graduation, one of my coworkers asked me on a Friday afternoon if I'd like to go to New Orleans. I said I was ready to go right after work. I was kidding, but he called my bluff, and by 7 o'clock three of us were in a car loaded with energy drinks, leaving Chicago. By noon the next day, we'd reached Breau Bridge for the Annual Crawfish Festival. Huge nets of crawfish were lowered into boiling water filled with powdered cajun spices. The nets were pulled out, and our trays filled with steaming crawfish. It was beautiful. By Saturday night, we were in New Orleans. This was post-Katrina, but it was still one of the most beautiful cities I have ever visited, once you get past the fluorescent novelty cups, hand grenade shots, and beads everywhere. We listened to live jazz, got wasted, and struck out. The next morning, we went to the Jazz and Blues Festival, listened to a lot of bands I have never heard, and also Jimmy Buffet. I don't know if he was Jazz or Blues. Food at music festivals is, in general, supposed to suck, but a po' boy filled to the brim with softshell crab coated in cajun spices, washed down by a bottle of Abita, that was a special food memory from the first bite.

WINNER: Tough break for New Orleans, but Harold's is just going to be very hard to beat.