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The chicken and waffles is a staple dish of many black restaurants these days
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and has even crossed over to mainstream restaurants. But how did this popular dish come to be
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The chicken and waffle dish is simply a mixing of two already popular dishes
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fried chicken and waffles. But who was the first to start serving these two dishes together
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Back in 2013, an NPR cooking show called The Salt did a segment on chicken and waffles and called it a southern dish
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But soon, they were getting pushed back from many southerners who said they did not grow up eating chicken and waffles
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In fact, they were only introduced to the dish when they went to New York or Los Angeles
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So how is it possible that a dish that most of us associate with soul food and the South not be a southern tradition
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T thank God you here How you find me It the only chicken and waffle place in all the Holland So a black man got to be of the chicken and waffles place That racist
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But you are here. Yeah, but figuring it out is racist. Well, there are actually a couple of different origin stories of this delicious dish
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The first origin story goes all the way back to when Thomas Jefferson came back from Europe with four waffle irons in the 1780s
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Although the waffle was already in America at that time, the popularity of it exploded after Jefferson's return with the waffle irons
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In the early 1800s, Samo hotels outside of Philadelphia started serving waffles with fried catfish
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Over time, the fried catfish was replaced with fried chicken due to the catfish's limited availability
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And by the 1860s, waffles served with chicken and gravy were a common Sunday dish among the Pennsylvania
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Then the popularity of the dish spread to the rest of the country and caught on especially with the black community That already had its own tradition with fried chicken When the dish started popping up in various restaurants in the north it was African cooks that perfected it
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In the 1930s, the version of the chicken and waffles we are most familiar with today
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became a hit at the Wells Supper Club in Harlem, an eatery frequented by the likes of Sammy Davis Jr. and Nike King Cole
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The chicken and waffles found fame in the West with the opening of the world famous Roscoe's chicken and waffles in Long Beach, California, in the early 1970s
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However, the first time the dish came to Los Angeles was actually in 1931, when it was served at the restaurant, the Maryland, which marketed the dish as a southern specialty
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Another origin story has the chicken and waffles coming out of the south
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The dish was a popular feast for special occasions at plantations. but blacks rarely had the chance to have it
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Chicken was considered a prestigious food within the African American community The waffle was also delicacy served on special occasions As black women were mostly in charge of the kitchen
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at plantations, they got familiar with the recipe and brought it with them as they moved up north
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Would it be safe to assume that the chicken and waffle was once a southern dish that moved up
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north as blacks moved north? John T. Edge, the author of Fried Chicken, an American story, told
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NPR that the chicken and waffle is a southern dish once or twice removed from the south
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He believes it's a dish most popular among former African-American southerners now living in
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urban areas, be it the urban south, the urban east, or the urban west
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Whatever the story of the chicken and waffle is, we sure are glad this delicious dish
