Good Thing The City Only Requires Calorie Counts For The Mean Old Chains
Otherwise even more soul food restaurants would probably close:
Posted: August 6th, 2008 | Filed under: Feed, There Goes The NeighborhoodA recitation of the names of the vanished Harlem soul food restaurants — where the waitress/owner called everyone “Baby,” and the temperature in the room was determined by the amount of lard in the skillet — would be longer than the menu at most of the places.
Among those now out of business are: 22 West, where Malcolm X used the pay phone in back to do radio broadcasts; Adel’s, popular for its fried chicken; Pan Pan, which burned down in 2004; Wilson’s, known for its breakfasts; Wimps, revered for its smothered chicken and red velvet cake; Singleton’s, which was among the last restaurants to regularly serve pig tail stew, hog maws, and pig ears; and Wells Supper Club, best known as the restaurant credited with putting chicken and waffles on the same plate.
Onetime staples like butter beans, country fried steak, hog maws, oxtails, chicken livers, ham hocks, neck bones, and chitterlings have become uncommon, and in some cases, unavailable, in this former soul food capital.
. . .
Restaurants, including soul food places, are also operating under increased pressure from the city to offer more nutritious meals. This summer, the city banned restaurants from using artificial trans fat to prepare foods, and also required chain restaurants to post calorie counts of their menu items.
Even before the new laws took effect, some traditional soul food restaurants began to offer more healthful choices, including sometimes using skim milk in macaroni and cheese, and offering the option of oven fried, instead of deep fried, chicken.
The calorie count for a traditionally prepared dish of macaroni and cheese, for instance, is about 650 calories, and a single piece of deep fried chicken can have more than 400 calories, said Lindsey Williams, author of Neo Soul cookbook.
Those numbers are in line with a typical fast food meal: At McDonald’s, a Big Mac has about 540 calories, while a McDonald’s premium crispy chicken club sandwich contains 630 calories, according to the restaurant.