Really Too Much To Ask Of Knoxville

A guilty pleasure from Los Angeles is Roscoe's House of Chicken 'n' Waffles. Yummy, fluffy waffles and southern fried chicken. Everyone likes friend chicken and everyone likes waffles -- they're two great tastes that go great together! Roscoe serves them up with a heapin' mess o' collard greens.

Tonight, the Wife and I went out to run some errands and decided to have a cheap dinner out at Waffle House. I asked for a fried chicken breast and a waffle. I was sort of expecting to have to explain what was going on to the waitress, who of course had never in her life heard of such a thing. I also got a look of shocked disdain from The Wife, who apparently had forgotten about this particular culinary treat.

The chicken came back grilled, not fried. The waitress took it upon herself to assume that I had wanted a grilled chicken breast instead of a fried one. It still tasted good, but when the maple syrup makes contact with the breading on a fried chicken, something magic happens. (That would be the "magic" way the plaque on my arteries accumulates.) When the waitress came back to ask if everything was okay, The Wife said, "He's a weirdo."

"No, this is really, really good!" I said. "It's better if you fry the chicken."

"Oh, I could have fried it! I didn't know that's how you wanted it; I just thought you wanted a grilled chicken breast instead. But yeah, I could have fried it. It's just that, well, I've never heard of that before."

"Well, don't worry about it, this tastes fine."

When I got home tonight I made myself a casserole dish full of creamed spinach. Not quite the same thing as collard greens, but close enough. And I don't care if people in Tennessee (even my own wife) think that chicken and waffles are a strange combination. They taste good, damnit.