Whenever the subject of fried chicken is discussed within earshot, those who know me well will generally give a wry smile in my general direction, denoting (I like to think) an imaginary cap-doffing to my superior knowledge on the subject, but (in reality) usually some kind of quasi-racist acknowledgement that I am hard-wired to love the stuff and eat far too much of it.
Anyone other than the most skilled body language interpreters would see this almost imperceptible gesture as some kind of in joke, which in fairness it is, but the very keen-eyed would understand the depths of nefarious behaviour this particular hobby has taken me to.
When living in London, where shops (but not pubs) close early, a quiet Tuesday night beer with friends would often end abruptly at 10.45pm as I made my excuses for the next day's early rise. The reality was that, rather than a gentle stroll home to get a shower and my head down, my alcohol-sodden brain (and pre-disposition for being a total fucking lightweight when drinking) had identified that I needed food urgently and that the nearest KFC was usually within a 15 minute amble/walk/increasingly panicked run as the clock ticks over to 10.58pm. These dashes would usually end in a gluttonous, shameful scramble (ideally in bed, if the KFC was near home) to devour every last bit of chicken skin in sight before passing out as my body failed to metabolise the booze as quickly as I would have hoped. I remember with fondness the time I discovered the Piccadilly Circus KFC shut at 2am, and then promptly rode a night bus a long way in the wrong direction to visit it after I failed to make the 11pm cut-off elsewhere.
Like a junkie on his last few dollars and looking for a cheap hit, I've also visited (in order of increasing awfulness) various "Mississippi Fried Chicken", "Tennessee Fried Chicken" and "Milwaukee Fried Chicken" outlets. Let's just say that if I were a chicken, I certainly wouldn't want to die in Milwaukee.
These are but minor horrors. In the interests of preserving my reputation, the lowest moments of fried chicken mania will not be published here. And this is not intended to be a biography about fried chicken, although it may as well be.
It should be pointed out, in the interests of balance, that fried chicken can also be a source of immense non-alcohol induced joy. I've celebrated birthdays with it and (once, to my mother's horror) asked for it on a return home instead of a home-cooked meal.
But this was not 10.45pm in London or a birthday. This was a slightly damp Tuesday night at 8pm in Hong Kong and a fellow connoisseur and I were standing outside a Jollibee in Wanchai. We had been waiting for this night for a while, having been egging each other on to dedicate a night to find out if Jollibee, a fried chicken joint in the manner of KFC, but hailing from the Philippines, is actually any good.
We were by no means pioneers. Others had done this, uploaded their findings on YouTube for us to watch and generally sucked a lot of fun out of the uncertainty, but this wasn't so much about originality as being the latest instalment of the Fried Chicken Chronicles that are my life.
Sitting at my kitchen table a few minutes later being stared back at by four whopping great bits of fried chicken, some (cold) fries, an inexplicably tiny peach and mango pie and a salad (bought elsewhere in the hope it would help balance out the nutritional value of the meal), it all seemed a bit much for a weekday.
The reassuring "pop" of champagne cork, which was selected as the proper accompaniment from my "collection" of two alcoholic options in the fridge, was enough to bring some perspective back to the room, and a much needed justification. I figured if anyone asked why I had ordered Jollibee for dinner, I'd just say I was drunk on midweek champagne (which is a perfectly socially acceptable state of affairs for an expat in Hong Kong).
The experience itself was pleasant, if not revolutionary. The chicken, which may as well have been come from turkeys given the size, was brilliantly crispy and made me regret my earlier trips to Hong Kong KFCs, which seem to serve up damp and flabby-skinned dross whenever I'm around. A win. The cold fries were cold, but still served as useful vessels for me to soak up the tasty brown gravy like it was going out of fashion. The salad was unnecessary. The "peach and mango pie" was about the size of my fingernail and tasted like a pop tart. I don't like pop tarts.
But let's be fair, this was (and will always be) mainly about the chicken. And the chicken was good.
PS. Even though I live in a city where things (not just pubs) are open late and I don't have to sprint for my post-booze fix, Chicken Hof and Soju on Lockhart Road deserves a special mention in the context of this fried chicken confessional. Doing fried chicken and beer of the Korean variety, it is open until the positively ludicrous hour of 4am on a Saturday, and is usually filled with a kind of hushed, earnest bustle that only drunk people and fried food can produce. Sadly their smallest portion is a whole fried chicken cut into pieces, which you would have thought would leave you leftovers if you buy it solo. Guess again.