To give you some idea, when I joked with the waitress that I wanted 'four fried chickens and a Coke,' she took the statement at face value. She'd never seen the Blues Brothers, but she had seen people order such quantities of food.
I remember back when the plains were black with buffalo, Rush Limbaugh mentioned on his radio show that he'd be taking his speaking tour to Kansas City, and was going to dine at Stroud's. This was back when he was relatively new to national syndication, and would brag about being on three hundred and some stations and compare his weight with that number, and the comparison was always pretty close.
I remember he said, 'When you die, this is what they scrape out of your arteries.'
He wasn't lying. Anyway, back then, Stroud's was in a run-down building under a bridge. And people waited outside the place for a seat to eat genuine pan-fried chicken served family style. There was a Stroud's up north of the river, but that was practically like travel. For those of us on the mainland, Stroud's meant the shack on 87th.
A few years ago, the building was razed, and I gather the family that owns the business had some setbacks getting another location in the southern end of the metro.
There's finally a Stroud's again, this time in a building that was once a Waid's, and has since been four or five failed restaurants. If they can't make a go there, the location is obviously not meant to be a restaurant.
I don't think there's any danger of that. My employer prints their menus, and only two weeks after opening, the owner called to reorder carryout menus. When I asked how many, he said, 'Whatever we did last time, quadruple it.' Okay, 16,000 carryout menus coming up, even though the place has been so busy they've often refused takeout orders because the kitchen can barely keep up with the dining room.
In fact, when we asked the waitress just how many chickens get cooked there every day, she didn't know. But she seemed to recall it was something like 10,000 pounds a week.
Before there wasn't a Stroud's in the vicinity for people to miss, keep in mind, they had people waiting in line. We wanted to eat there for my brother's 36th birthday, but we didn't want to wait two hours or more for a table.
I called to see about a reservation, but they don't take them. I inquired as to when their slow time might be. 1:45 to 3:00, the guy said, he wouldn't guarantee you could just walk in and be seated, but that'd be the shortest wait you'd likely encounter.
Bro got there at 3:00 and was told it'd be 30 minutes. The rest of us headed that way and got there just after the table had come available. That's about as lucky as it gets.
I eat fried chicken so rarely I honestly forget what it tastes like. I mean the vivid flavor recollection I can get with foods I eat regularly. First bite, and I'm like, That's what Willis was talkin' about!
As I've said, Mo does love her some fried chicken. She demolished four wings and two breasts, which was more than even her gluttonous father consumed (I was good for two breasts and a wing, a bit of mashed potatoes and gravy, a thimble of green beans).
As a heart attack survivor, Rush's joke about what they scrape out of your arteries isn't that funny, but if food is going to kill you, this comes as close to worth it as you can get without falling in.
After, we went back to Grandma Mary's for tree climbing, sidewalk chalk, appliance box houses, and pie.
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