A few months back, Anthony Bourdain remarked that there’s no place on earth like you, New Orleans. Grillades and grits is a great example. I had never heard of it and I’ve never had anything like it. Highlight of the trip.

Chicken and waffles for Eliza.

Let’s go for a walk, New Orleans. You can sing us a song. “Do you know what it meeeeeeeans…”

Let’s try something completely different. What’s that? Another John Besh restaurant? Do they have grillades and grits?

A pork sandwich will have to do.

After a dinner (with no photos) at Herbsaint, we’ve got one final meal with you, New Orleans. Our last breakfast at Luke was lovely. Let’s do that again.

Eliza will have the pate. I’ll help her out. Doesn’t she look dainty?

Excuse me, New Orleans. Will you pass me my wide angle lens? Otherwise, I’m not going to be able to fit this soft shell crab sandwich in this camera’s meager frame. And yes, that is a fried egg on top.

Eliza’s mom had a fried oyster salad featuring the bacon of one Mr. Allan Benton.

That was fun, New Orleans. Let’s do it again soon.

We don’t eat fried food every day, but it’s true that we like the stuff. And sure, there’s the occasional day when we feel like eating a plate of nothing but. On those days, we go to Top Notch.

Top Notch is about as old school as they come. I don’t imagine the interior of this place has changed for decades.

The burgers are char-grilled, but we tend to go for the fried chicken.

It goes great with french fries and fried okra. If you’re into fried food.

But as it turns out, the South may not have the fried chicken market cornered after all. Apparently Koreans know a thing or two about frying a bird. And they’ve brought their magic to the miserable people of Manhattan.

Our friend Rob brought us to Mad For Chicken. In typical New York fashion, it’s hidden away like some kind of speakeasy. The photo below shows what the entrance looks like from the street. So before we even started eating, we were impressed a) that people obviously go out of their way to visit this place and b) that Rob was able to find it.

Similar to the methods used to make non-greasy french fries, the Korean style involves a two-stage frying process that allows the meat to cook all the way through, while maintaining a light and crisp skin. It also typically has sauce on the chicken (like Buffalo sauce, but not disgusting like Buffalo sauce). We ordered what seemed like a mountain of chicken, half soy-garlic and half hot-and-spicy. It was pretty dark inside, so it was tough to get a clear photo.

Here’s one I shot by steadying the camera on the table. It gives you a glimpse of that nice, crisp skin.

As we left, I noticed they actually did have a sign, barely visible in a second floor window.

The thing about New Yorkers and food is that they have a point. You can’t really deny that they have the best of everything available to them. You also can’t deny the joy of discovering an entirely new kind of fried chicken. And to be honest, this trip really got us thinking seriously about making a move.

On the other hand, sometimes being right carries with it a price. Or, as the Dude said:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uQl5aYhkF3E&hl=en_US&fs=1&rel=0&border=1]

We encountered this promising sign in La Grange, Texas. La Grange is the little town made famous by the Chicken Ranch, otherwise known as in The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas. Yes, it was actually a real place. The town’s reputation was further cemented by ZZ Top’s eponymous air guitar standard.

What’s better than a little fried chicken across the railroad tracks from the cemetery?

The Gold’n Crisp lives up to its name.

A little advice for all you young fellas out there: Never underestimate a woman who’s comfortable tearing apart some chicken on the bone.

And with that, our week of eating on the road was over. (Oh yeah, I guess Eliza’s high school reunion was in there somewhere, too.) It was good to be back home after the equivalent of a work week in the car. And it was even better to realize that after all that time couped up in Eliza’s CRV, we weren’t even sick to death of each other.

I used to work with a guy from China. He was doing his MBA summer internship at the consulting firm where I worked. He was a very curious kind of guy, always asking questions. He never stopped, especially when it came to understanding the language and culture of America. I remember one day when we were sitting in traffic on the way to lunch. It was one of those sweltering summer days in Atlanta. I had been charged with managing him for the summer, and I was doing my best to feed him well, if nothing else.

We had been working long hours on a hard project, and I was starting to grow weary of his incessant inquiries. It just took so much effort to be around this guy, always answering questions, always thinking so rationally. And they were never straightforward questions I could readily answer like “What is the best live country record of all time?” (Charlie Pride’s In Person.)

So there we sit, my car’s A/C struggling under the weight of Atlanta’s humidity, and he points at this car with Alabama plates. He reads the state motto aloud in his unsure, staccato English: “Stahs… Fell… On… A-la-ba-ma.” Then he turns to me and asks, “Is that a good thing?”

I threw up my hands, exasperated: “I don’t know, man! They put it on their license plate, so I guess they think it’s pretty good.” He didn’t say anything in reply. He just filed it away. A little more data on this odd, foreign place called the United States. The land where stars fall, and it’s a good thing.

Several years later, I now have one more Alabama association: chicken fingers. Although, now that I actually look at the photos it’s fair to say that it’s a Georgia thing, too. At any rate, our first encounter with the chicken finger “concept” was Jim Bob’s. We were passing through Opelika, Alabama. A little past Columbus, GA, but well short of Montgomery, AL. We didn’t have any road food recommendations, so we were shooting in the dark.

But alas, it was Sunday. I guess Jim Bob (or a higher power) was trying to tell us something. I suppose we were hungering for the wrong kind of sustenance, because they were closed.

So we headed across the street to Zaxby’s. Of course Zaxby’s started in Statesboro, so this was an appropriate choice.

Eliza didn’t have anything. My ordering experience was a debacle, but finally I returned to the car with this little beauty.

Only three chicken fingers!? I guess we’ll have to stop for more down the road.

A few hours later, we considered stopping at a Popeye’s in Mobile, but it looked a little sketchy. We decided to gamble on another fried chicken joint called foosackly’s. I was a little skeptical of the name, but was charmed when we stepped inside.

“Keep Mobile Funky.” Sounds familiar.

I absolutely loved the design of this place. It spoke to me, and here’s what it said: “We just got out of school and decided to sell chicken fingers. We took some marketing classes and we wear our hats backwards.”

They offered us some of their signature sauce, which I think was called “foo sauce.” The woman at the register told us, “It’s like a spicy thousand island.” Nothing wrong with that.

The whole foosackly’s experience was great. They chicken was fried and seasoned to perfection. The foo sauce (or whatever they called it) was exactly what fried chicken needs: a little creamy, a little spicy and a little sweet.

Later on the trip, we saw several of these “Raising Cane’s Chicken Fingers.” These sightings confirmed what we had begun to suspect: Alabama loves chicken fingers. Not fried chicken, mind you, but chicken fingers.

Still no official word on whether stars falling is a good thing.