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HAPPY FATHER’S DAY!: OR, CHOPO CHICKEN

by Joseph Suglia

Chopo Chicken in Chicago, Illinois: the most insulting eatery I have yet attended.

The dwellers of Lincoln Park were entranced by the parti-colored mural on the residential-street side of this chowtrough for three months before its vernissage.  This makes the experience that I had all the more disheartening.

The place is grungy.  The Styrofoam containers are flecked with filth, even before being loaded with the swill that is hawked here.  Were they taken from the trash and reused?  There are clean Styrofoam containers beneath the counter, if you ask for them.

The Yucca fries are cold and old.  They taste like week-old French fries and are smothered in a bilious goo.

A man in a grime-sodden gown takes out a cleaver and hatchets a whole chicken into quarters.  The chicken is encrusted with an anthracitic substance.  The chicken is, strangely, almost meatless.

It is roadkill chicken.  It looks like a chicken that was killed on the road.  It looks as if the chicken, with Schopenhauerian exertion, strove to cross the road only to end up as faux-Peruvian cuisine at Chopo Chicken.

The portions are cafeteria-size.  I understand well the fundamental principle of business: buy cheap and sell dear.  It is clear that the gangsterish restaurateurs want to spend as little money as possible and charge as much money as possible.  But if they want their restaurant to survive–and nine out ten restaurants go extinct–they have to offer something that people would want to eat or would want to eat again.

Joseph Suglia

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