Batters Up
Everyone wants to know how ALEXIS' chicken is fried, died and laid to the
side.
By Sara Roahen
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ALEXIS co-owner Victoria Dix has carried on the fried chicken family
tradition.
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WHAT: Alexis Fried Chicken & Seafood
CUISNE: Soul Food
WHEN: 5 p.m. to 3 a.m. Tuesday through Thursday,
5 p.m. to 5 a.m. Friday and Saturday
WHERE:2216 S. Claiborne Ave., 524-8807
CARDS: Major
Cooling out beside the mammoth fan at Alexis Fried Chicken & Seafood one
muggy evening, an old-timer lady and I were fixin' to discover the Alexis
secret ingredient. The family hadn't leaked the secret since Earl J. Alexis Sr.
opened his chicken shack 50 years ago, and the old-timer was sure they weren't
about to let it slip now. She had been licking her fingers of traces of Alexis
fried chicken for as long as the family had been frying it, she said. Each
attempt at reproducing the recipe at home brought her back to the same place:
there, in line, waiting for her four-piece dinner. We craned our necks to see
into the modest kitchen. We devised plans to bribe delivery drivers. In the
end, we parted with our own steaming bags of freshly fried chicken, the task of
hurrying home to eat outweighing glamorous plots of espionage.
Mr. Alexis passed away last month at age 92. His great-nieces
Angela and Victoria Dix carry on the chicken legacy, frying up fowl at prices
below that of fast-food competitors. At their legendary take-out
hole-in-the-wall, a faded menu offers chicken orders from two to 50 pieces,
plus seafood plates, fried oyster sandwiches, sides of fries, and potato salad
when they feel like it. Over-heated customers lean against the two soda
machines (the only beverage selections) in the cramped waiting area. At peak
hours, the line snakes out to busy Claiborne Avenue. I saw a man fresh out of
the hospital, ID bracelet still on his wrist, order a fried liver sandwich.
Another in Carharts and construction boots waited on 30 pieces of white meat to
take home to his family after work. The friend I made had traveled from eastern
New Orleans with her cousin. They reminisced about the early 1970s, when the
neighborhood was safer. Mason's Lounge was across Claiborne Avenue. They would
drink until the wee hours, walk over for chicken and carouse some more. The
partying doesn't call them anymore, but the chicken does.
At home, I tore open my mixed bag to find each of the six pieces
wrapped in its own paper sack to keep it from sweating, softening and
congealing with the others. The skin was lightly golden, thin and crispy. Dark
thigh meat was characteristically moist, but it was the white breast meat that
shocked me. It was juicy all the way through.
When the elder Alexis first began frying, chickens were sturdy but
wiry, akin to today's free-range variety. These days, mad science and hormones
allow us to breed chickens to superhero proportions. Consumers prefer the
breast, so buxom birds result. The catch is that breasts of these superchickens
take so long to cook that they dehydrate before they are safe to eat. Pay
attention the next time you order from Popeyes or KFC, and you'll taste what I
mean. The luscious chicken breast at Alexis is a rare find and worth the
sometimes painful wait.
There are two batter camps when it comes to frying chicken. The
Alexis people and I are in the light-batter camp. Usually, a thin golden crust
is achieved by lightly dredging the bird through seasoned flour before a dip
into the sizzling fryer. The other camp prefers the thicker, rugged and heavily
seasoned batters, the kind that break teeth at fast-food joints. Most often,
this heftier coating comes from an additional dip into a mixture of milk and
egg before frying. And there are as many batter sub-camps as there are Southern
grandmothers. Some cooks soak their chicken in buttermilk or saltwater; others
use cornmeal instead of flour, beer instead of milk, the shake-in-a-bag method
in place of dredging. A more dubious recipe (I call it the "Southern fried
bachelor") calls for pancake mix, MSG and chicken bouillon.
As for the Alexis secret ingredient, I wondered, too. Their dredged
and fried-to-order chicken was scrumptious, yet as straightforward as it gets.
It captured the ideal of fried food: dry, crispy and greaseless on the outside,
moist and juicy within. The batter was light, clean, slightly peppered and
subtly smoky, as if a little bacon grease had sneaked into the fryer. The fried
chicken's primary flavor was chicken. Imagine that. Is there a secret, or do
these Alexis people just know what they are doing?
I couldn't sleep. At 2 a.m. Sunday, I phoned the soul food stop,
hoping that whoever answered would be too tired to put up a fight. "Secret? I
don't know if it's a secret," the exuberant voice on the other end paused, and
I held my breath, "but we use flour and salt and pepper." Ah-ha! "And vegetable
shortening for fryin'."
It turns out the Alexis recipe isn't the kind of secret a family
keeps locked up, like the Colonel Sanders mix of herbs and spices secured in a
guarded Kentucky vault. No, simplicity is trickier than that. Sometimes, the
greatest challenge for a cook is knowing how to let food speak for itself.
Sometimes, the most elusive secrets are the flour, the salt and the pepper
right under your nose.
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