Quick, somewhat inane question about chicken and waffles

Should the maple syrup be hot or cold?

(I warned you)

Although I’ve never had it, chicken and waffles is usually eaten with a chicken based gravy dumped over it all, so no, maple syrup is not used.

The chicken and waffles restaurant here serves warmed syrup (no gravy).

Mmm…chicken gravy…

This combination has always baffled me. Someday I’ll try it.

Yeah, it baffles me, too. Everyone knows it’s supposed to be turkey and waffles.

This is getting more complicated by the minute! Turkey and waffles?!

Never heard of the combo. It it regional?

There’s a famous* chicken-and-waffles joint (Roscoe’s House of… ) in Los Angeles. Its Web site claims that the founders brought the dish from Harlem.

I hate dining out alone and everyone I’ve talked to about it turns their noses up at the combination. I honestly can’t see why it strikes so many people as repugnant. (And no, smart guys, it’s not because of my company, because we usually end up eating somewhere else.)

Roscoe’s definitely uses syrup, although I don’t know if it’s hot or cold. Pouring chicken gravy on waffles seems like kind of a waste to me - might as well be eating biscuits.

  • For certain values of fame.

That web site says the owner founded the restaurant in the mid-'70s. However, in the 1941 book *Mildred Pierce *by James M. Cain (later made into a movie with Joan Crawford), Mildred makes her fortune by opening a chicken-and-waffle restaurant in Southern California (Pasadena, I think). So Roscoe’s proprietary recipe might have been brought from Harlem, but the dish was local before (and I’m sure Cain doesn’t get credit for inventing it).

The combination sounds good to me, but definitely without the maple syrup. I grew up eating turkey and toast with gravy, so putting the turkey and gravy over waffles isn’t that much of a stretch.

Thank you for fighting ignorance. According to the menu Roscoe’s does serve gravy…but those combos includes biscuits.

I grew up on the stuff. Back in the 60s, our local church ran an annual fair with food, rides, games, and whatnot. The big highlight every year was the chicken and waffles dinner. I grew up in Western Pennsylvania, so I don’t really know if it was a regional thing, or spread over from Harlem or what.

Just a note that maple syrup doesn’t pour all that well when it’s cold. Well, chilled. Conceivably, the syrup should be at least room temperature.

**Roadfood **lists chicken-and-waffles restaurants in Texas, too. So maybe somebody went to a restaurant on a road trip, thought it was a great idea, and opened his own at home. You’d have to do the research to see which came first. We could ask Jane and Michael Stern to do the work for us . . .