Tastes Like Chicken

We went out to dinner with a group of friends the other evening. I’m not sure how the subject even came up, but city chicken was mentioned. There were ten people at the table and only two had ever even heard the term. Actually three people had heard of it if you count me, but I knew about it only because of Claire. City chicken was our son’s most favorite meal when he was growing up — maybe it still is.

If you’re from Cleveland, or around there, there’s about a 99% chance that city chicken is a familiar term to you. Otherwise, you may have never heard of it, let alone know what it is.

First off, city chicken is a dish that contains absolutely no chicken. I’m not sure about the origin, but I think that city chicken originated during the Great Depression, when folks didn’t have enough money to buy full cuts of meat, so they assembled meat scraps on a wooden skewer, creating a make-shift drumstick. Apparently during the Depression era, chicken was scarce and more expensive. So pork and veal meat was cubed and threaded onto skewers, then breaded to create a drumstick-like shape to better resemble chicken.

Chicken used to be the preferred dish and it was more expensive and more desirable — families would have chicken for Sunday dinner. When the Depression came along, a number of mock-chicken products came into vogue so I imagine all that played into the naming of pork and veal on a stick, city chicken.

When Claire made city chicken when the kids were young, she always used pork and veal. What with the price of veal today, it’s hard to imagine it was once cheaper than chicken. But apparently that was the case a good number of years ago. The last few times we’ve had city chicken, Claire has used only pork…. It’s still good, but not the same as the pork and veal version.
Once one of Dave’s friends was over when we were having city chicken — he said it must be called city chicken because the bones were so small (he had found the stick.)

It’s kind of fun to serve it to someone for the first time — and tell them that this isn’t actually chicken we’re eating. Sort of an instant conversation starter….
— 30 —