Oh, I didn’t realize there was a difference! (Sorry, guess I never had proper nashville hot chicken, then)
Yeah, I’ve had it in Nashville at Prince’s maybe fifteen years back (oh, I get to tout some indie cred saying I was into Nashville hot chicken before it was cool!) And WildaBeast’s description is right on. It’s literally just delicious fried chicken basted in an oil-and-spice paste. The oil may be lard, fresh oil, or the cooking oil from the fried chicken. Just cayenne is all you need and cayenne gets plenty hot when there’s a lot of it and when it’s dissolved in fat. I’ve heard rumors that Prince’s also uses Slap Ya Mama cajun seasoning in it (cayenne, black pepper, white pepper, garlic) but the official origin story has cayenne and lard (and an angry wife who did not approve of Prince’s philandering ways.) How much is true and how much is part of the usual food lore, I don’t know. At Prince’s it was served with white bread and some pickle chips (dill, IIRC).
Not a big fan of tapioca either. However, I must admit I do sorta like those popping boba fruit juice spheres. I don’t get such drinks very often, because sugar. Honestly, probably maybe three times total. But I found them kind of fun and refreshing.
Now, that’s a boba I could get into, but, yeah, I can’t afford to waste calories on fruit juice.
You just reminded me of this - when we lived in NY, my father would take a half-empty suitcase with him to Los Angeles on business trips. When he came home, it was filled with tortillas, Haas avocados (because all we could get in NY was Florida avocados and they were horrible), jalepenos, and ortega chilis. None of that could be found where we lived.
As you may have noticed, some folks who have very narrow experience post as if their perspective is universal. It’s annoying, but we have to smile and let them pontificate. It’s the price we pay here on the dope.
Not new, but in the 70’s my aunt and uncle who lived in California came to visit Wisconsin they would bring back bratwurst as it was hard to find where they lived. My brother in MI complained that while bratwurst is available, bratwurst specific buns are not. (not sure how true this is)
Brian
Brian
We did the same thing – we lived in North Carolina when I was a kid, my grandparents lived in Wisconsin. So whenever we went to visit them we always brought back a bunch of bratwurst with us, because at the time it was hard to find outside of Wisconsin. It seemed like it became more widely available starting in the 1990s.
Add me to the list of folks who’re incredulous that the esteemed @DrDeth hasn’t encountered avocado toast in CA. Perhaps he lives 50 miles outside Fresno and rarely goes to town?
Here in SoFL, even Denny’s has avocado toast on their menus. And yes, it’s Haas avocados, not that weird mutant Florida Avocado. (Aside: if you don’t know what a Florida avocado is, you’re better off staying in that state of bliss. Don’t ask, don’t tell. They be vile 'an shit.)
Back when I was still working and traveling the whole USA, most hotel breakfast menus had avocado toast. The Marriott in Des Moines has avocado toast. It’s been “in” for a decade or more. Very far from cutting edge breakfast fare. The fact it’s still going strong WAG 15 years after it hit big suggests to me that, like eggs Benedict, it will be a permanent fixture on mainstream US breakfast menus.
As to Starbuck’s and pretention …
I can sure see that as the reaction of a 50yo guy in 1990s not-big-city USA / Canada who was used to wearing wifebeaters and walking into a greasy diner and telling Madge behind the counter that he wants black, half cream, and sugar to go. Madge is wearing a dress that looks like a hotel maid uniform, and will pour out our hero’s coffee from a Bunn carafe that was last cleaned a week ago.
Yeah, compared to that, early Starbuck’s was wildly pretentious. But times have changed.
I’ve never been a fan of “tall, grande, and venti” because those words mean nothing to me and so I have no idea which is larger than which. OTOH, that kind of sizing BS is not new.
When I was a kid (WAG 8yo), so mid 1960s, the pizza parlors (not takeout) all had 3 sizes: medium, large, and extra large. I can recall my Dad bitching that they ought to be small, medium, and large. And that one day they’d be “gargantuan, super-gargantuan, and colossal”. Pizza sizes and names didn’t quite evolve according to his prophesy; inflation saw to that.
But as applied to 7-11 drinks, dear old Dad was prophetically right. The incredibly huge “Big Gulp” of my youth is now the smallest size they sell, barely 1/4th the size of the biggest. Which has some superlative-laced name I can’t rightly recall.
As I believe you’re in Canada I should mention my experience with President’s Choice Nashville style chicken wings. I think they’re a relatively new entry in the lineup. They’re actually quite good, but not at all what one would expect in chicken wings. To me, “chicken wings” means something hot and spicy, like Buffalo wings or some variant of it. The Nashville stuff is exactly like any other fried chicken – crispy and tasty, but not at all spicy. It’s like it just came from KFC. I might buy it again because it’s pretty good, but it’s definitely not your conventional chicken wing.
As stated in this documentary:
Brian
That’s so funny. I regularly visit an old friend who lives in North Fork (45 miles outside Fresno), and he is constantly disparaging every newfangled trend that I happen to mention. If he hasn’t already discovered it, it doesn’t, or shouldn’t, exist. Usually, after a few years, he has fully adopted those new trends, but forgets his earlier caustic opinions.
I only learnt about avocado toast a month ago, when a new café opened in my office building.
Heh, yeah, very true… it’s all relative. Though I guess that’s as much an urban/rural divide as the difference between any two latte chains. Maybe the idea of a latte is in and of itself pretentious for some part of the population, especially before Starbucks took over the world?
Coffee is such a funny cultural thing anyway. Here in the US we have grandes, ventis, and trentas (their “XL” size), while Starbuckses in Europe will only have short, tall, and grande and you have to specially ask for venti. Asia too. Kinda like t-shirt sizes, I guess. And every culture and subculture has their favorite particular preparation of it.
I tried to order an iced americano (which is just ice water with a couple shots of espresso) in Finland once at a corner coffee shop. They looked at me funny, asked me to explain it, asked me to double-check and make sure it wasn’t a translation error (even though we were speaking in English). Then they went to their supervisor, who came back and asked me the same questions. They finally, very reluctantly, made one. What I got was a couple of ice cubes, two shots of espresso, and a few teaspoons of room temp water. Sigh… it tasted even grosser than it looked. Shrug. The country’s other, regular lattes were amazing. To me the americano is just watered-down espresso, but to them it was apparently some unfathomable exotic cocktail.
Funnily enough, the Starbucks there in Helsinki was also a tourist destination, with a line in and out of the store.
Heh, have you ever watched Portlandia?
I wonder how much Pacific Northwest stuff we take for granted in this region would be considered weird alien fetishes elsewhere…
I live in the Santa Clarita area.
I said- I hadnt noticed it on the menu- not that it wasnt there. But I dont eat much at trendy places other than Sushi. Black Bear Diner, Chilis, BJs, and a half dozen great local mexican restaurants (we are blessed with them). None have avocado toast. I am certain quite a few trendy places have it- just that we dont go there. I wouldnt mind trying it. But I prefer my avocados turned into guacamole.
Not my local one.
I think Black Bear Diner serves avocado toast, for what it’s worth. (I just happened to remember that from my Mt. Shasta days, where that chain was originally from)
Either not at our location or just for breakfast. I think just for breakfast? We only go later in the afternoon. But maybe? Big menu.
Yeah, quite 
I’ve also never had avocado toast despite seeing it everywhere.
IME avocado toast is pretty much viewed as a breakfast food. So any place that serves breakfast off a separate menu they don’t hand out at lunch & dinnertime wouldn’t be seen by someone who eats only lunch or dinner there.
Santa Clarita was always real pretty country. Looks like it hasn’t been totally overrun w people. Yet. A neat place to live for sure.
Much better than Fresno 