Yesterday, I went to Kentucky Fried Chicken. It was the first time I'd seen one in Paris and I was strangely drawn to it. For anyone who knows me well, this would be a surprise, as I haven't eaten at KFC in over 12 years and profess an ardent hatred for the place.
What happened 12 years ago? All I remember is a hazy blur of lots of popcorn chicken, food poisoning, and subsequent hours of vomiting and illness. The concept of popcorn chicken is pretty disgusting to begin with: irregularly-shaped and probably left-over scraps of chicken deep fried to a crisp and served in a popcorn-style bucket for easy snacking. But I was kid, and that sounded cool to me.
After that incident I swore never to eat at KFC again, and I'd kept my vow until now. Just driving by one and smelling that distinct, vaguely chemical fried stink was enough to bring back the painful memories. And I'd heard similar stories from my friends.
That's why I felt a little guilty and hypocritical when I somehow found myself in line there yesterday. Still, I was starving and needed a quick meal. And that's why I was there: The French don't really understand the concept of quick meals or snacking.
I witnessed this firsthand when I ate dinner with my host family. French dinners tend to follow a long, elaborate protocol. After aperitifs in the salon, we moved to the dining room, where we had entrees (appetizers), the main course (almost always meat and a simple vegetable), then afterward salad, a cheese plate, dessert and a return to the salon for coffee.
Couple this with weird rituals like required alternating man-woman seating arrangements and the inefficient practice of not passing the food around in a circle but rather from oldest to youngest, and the whole thing becomes a multiple hour affair.
I'm not saying this is a bad system. The preservation of the family meal in France surely helps to maintain strong family bonds. I know in my family, a three-hour dinner would seem absurd - we're more likely to eat standing up or in front of the television. The French family meal also curbs snacking and overeating by spreading the meal time over an extended period of smaller, controlled portions.
Of course, you can escape the protracted family meal by going out to a restaurant, but even at restaurants you typically have three courses plus pre- and post-meal drinks. Couple this with sometimes lackluster service (French waiters are paid on salary and don't rely on tips for livelihood), and a meal quickly consumes your day.
Even to get a coffee in the morning you have to sit down at a caf?© and wait. It's nice if you have the time, but sometimes you just need to get it and go, and that's why the French are finally embracing the convenience of Starbucks.
And if it's a snack you want, you're pretty much restricted to a crepe or a sandwich. This doesn't sound so bad at first until you realize how limited the French definition of a sandwich is. Bread, ham, cheese. Bread, tomato, mayonnaise-soaked chicken. That about sums up the selection.
I know there is something to be said for simplicity in a sandwich, but sometimes you just want a whole lot of crap on your sandwich. Anyone at Tufts who enjoys Tasty Gourmet knows the virtue of this method.
Of course the one topping I don't want on my sandwich - mayonnaise - is the one thing I can't seem to escape. Before I came to Paris, mayonnaise was a condiment I avoided at all costs (people tend to either love it or hate it), but it's so ubiquitous here that I just have to bear it. If the sandwich isn't soaked in mayonnaise, then it's usually lined with 15 pats of unmelted butter.
I don't quite understand the logic of all this; I suppose the French think that an excess amount of mayonnaise or butter makes anything taste better, in the same way that I think a dose of hot sauce makes anything taste better. But hot sauce doesn't go straight to your arteries, at least to my knowledge.
All of my discontentment with the snail's pace of French food, its penchant for ingredient minimalism, and its dire lack of snacking options must have culminated at once to have caused me return to my former enemy KFC. But there I was, salivating for the Colonel's finger-licking goodness.
I ordered some type of huge chicken sandwich which came with cheese, lettuce, tomatoes and oddly, some type of fried hash brown disc on top of it all. It was exactly the gluttonous, topping-heavy sandwich I was looking for.
Oh, and don't forget the large jalapeno poppers I also ordered, another American novelty I hadn't seen anywhere else.
I got it to go and took my treats to eat at a park a few blocks away. But when I greedily opened the bag, I realized I had been given the wrong order. The idiocy of foodservice workers is universal, I suppose.
Instead of my sandwich and poppers, I had been given a big box of chicken wings and stale fries. It wasn't finger-licking good; it was middle-finger inducing. As images of phantom, putrid popcorn chicken pieces danced in my brain, I became angry and nauseous. I was hungry, but it wasn't worth it to break my decade-long embargo of KFC for this.
I threw the offending chicken in a trashcan and headed down the street for a good old mayonnaise sandwich - the streak still alive and my dignity intact.
Adam Winograd is a junior majoring in international relations. He can be reached at adam.winograd@tufts.edu.
