Half Your Chicken and Eat It Too

There are many kinds of barbecue, Kansas City style, South Carolina, Memphis.  The list could go on and on.  And all of the big barbecue authorities will tell you that what we do in our backyard on Memorial Day is grilling and not barbecue.  I am not writing this to argue any of those points.  I have already talked about my rural upbringing but you have to realize that where I grew up there was not a lot of restaurant choices and even fewer that were within my parents’ budget.  So growing up there was only one barbecue, Brooks’ House of BBQ.  And there was only one thing I ever ordered there, half chicken.

Brooks’ cooks their chickens over a large pit outside of the main restaurant and you can smell the food from the highway even if you aren’t planning to stop for dinner.  There isn’t a gooey barbecue sauce on the chicken, just a marinade that is be basted on the chicken halves as they are flipped over the coals, roasting until there are charred black flecks of flavor clinging to ever bit of the chicken skin.

We were semi-regulars at the House of BBQ, one of the few sit down restaurants we went to when I was growing up and I don’t know if we only ordered the chicken because we knew it was so good or because it was the cheapest item on the menu but I can’t say that I ever tried the ribs or anything else on the menu.  Even as an adult when I am responsible for my own ordering, I still stick with the chicken.  It comes with a simple salad bar, a miniature loaf of homemade bread, French fries and always a spiced apple ring sitting on top of the chicken.  You can order a baked potato instead of the fries, of course, but the fries are on the top of my list of worthy splurges.

The restaurant has a large open seating area with chicken and rooster décor as well as some stuffed animal heads on the wall.  Going there is like sitting in your favorite spot on an old reliable couch.  From the smell before you even open the door, to the bucket on the table for discarding your bones, to that bright red apple ring;  none of this has changed in all my life and I hope it never does.