Popeye's Louisiana Kitchen

4103 First Missouri Credit Union Dr
St. Louis, MO

Web site


Angel saw a commercial, or something.
Adam said he'd join us since it was not far from his bunker , across the mighty Meramec river in South St. Louis County.
A couple of months ago, during the hunt for a decent fish sandwich, Angel would often bring up Popeye's 'squished fish patty on a bun' commercial comparing (wink, wink) a 'certain' fast food chain's square fish patty (McDonalds) as 'seafood' to Popeye's 'Butterfly Shrimp Tackle Box.'
"I like my squished fish patty on a bun!" she repeated, probably a hundred times.
She was not looking for seafood at Popeye's though, she wanted to try the chicken. I told her I'd take yet another one for the team and get something fishy.
The Place:

South County. I'm not sure that's an actual municipality or whether it refers to the general area that hugs the Mississippi between the Meramec and St. Louis City. The city itself is not in St. Louis  County, it is a county/city entity all its own. The county that surrounds the city is made up of over a hundred municipalities, some distinct, others merely a blur between stop signs.
This location is fairly new. It was clean and sparkly inside, in the way only polished plastic can sparkle. The motif, fast food modern. There was not any attempt to make it look like anything other than fast food.
Angel and I already studied the online menu and were pretty set in our order, Adam was starting from scratch. Finally we ordered, Angel first. My turn came, I was prepared. "Fish and shrimp combo with coleslaw and a small drink."
The young man repeated back. "Fish and shrimp combo?"
"Yes"
"What side with that sir?"
"Coleslaw."
"What size drink would you like with that?"
"Small."
We filled our drink cups, I found us a shiny plastic covered table.
The Food:
I sipped my tea. I quickly looked around for an alternative drink. The tea was old, metallic and bitter.
Nothing. I don't like sweet drinks, period, other than juices. You didn't know that about me?
We sat waiting, I looked around as I am wont to do during eatery reviews. Six tables occupied, three people waiting for take out / pick up.
After five or eight minutes of note taking and analysis, I looked around again. Six tables occupied, three people waiting for take out / pick up.
None of them had food.
More people came in and ordered and waited.
Something was wrong in the kitchen. Orders were backed up, all of them, no food going out at all, for nearly twenty minutes.
Probably out of cooked chicken, since that seems to be the flagship of the brand.
A twenty minute wait at a sit down, waited on at the table restaurant is no big deal. At a fast food joint, it's an eternity.
Finally we were served.
It was a really brown meal. At first we couldn't tell the orders apart. I figured out mine because of the popcorn shrimp.
Angel: Mild chicken and coleslaw.
Adam: Spicy chicken tenders and mashed potatoes.
We also ordered a couple of the apple pie for later.
All orders come with their 'signature' buttermilk biscuit.
We noticed something immediately. There was no coleslaw.
A lady from the counter stopped and asked about sauces. We mentioned the missing sides, she apologized and disappeared, only to return a moment later with the slaw.
She asked again about sauces. I looked around. "Tarter sauce please."
She asked Adam and Angel as well, they declined.
A couple of moments later, she came back with a couple of condiment packets in her hand. "Which sauce did you ask for again?"
"Tartar sauce please."
She looked at the packets, turned around and walked away.
She soon came back with the right stuff.

I then started sorting through my basket. One thin, scrawny piece of fish, two thin, scrawny pieces of fish. three, THREE thin, scrawny pieces of fish. . . 
That's it. If you look at the photo, you'll see three small, rectangular objects, that's the fish. The fillets were about a quarter inch thick, probably less. Broken apart it would all fit into one cube of an ice tray.
Easily half the portion, if that much, of that pathetic squished fish patty on a bun at that other fast food restaurant.
It was also tough, rubbery and dry. So thin that it overcooked browning the breading. The majority of the real estate in the basket was occupied by popcorn shrimp. Also overcooked and so heavily battered that the shrimp inside was little more than a condiment. I disassembled one to measure the breading vs. shrimp ratio.

Shrimp on the left, breading on the right.

Statistically, I had a basket full of fried flour. Had they been crispy rather than rubbery, I night have eaten more than three of the approximately half cup of fried flour balls.
The biscuit looked right, too right, as if it had been made by a robot. Too round, too flat surfaced on top and bottom. I looked around, all over the place and could find no butter being offered, I decided to go ahead, commando style.
Ah, they had buttered the top. . . not the middle, mind you, the top, then added salt to make it seem like there was more butter than there was. The effect was a dry, too salty biscuit. Even Adam picked up on that butter/salt trick.
About a tiny fillet and a half of fish, three bites of biscuit, and three fried flour nuggets, I tossed the rest away. I had about half the coleslaw, nothing special there, creamy, sweet, with an odd hint of some herb, dill, cilantro, something Angel couldn't quite describe it either, a little off putting, whatever it was.
Adam complained about the mashed potatoes. Apparently Popeye's claims a Louisiana spiced mashed potato. To Adam, this was sacrilege. Mashed potatoes aren't supposed to be spicy. "Mashed potatoes are already southern, why do they have to mess with that?" He screamed.
 Angel rather enjoyed her chicken, it had a touch of spiciness without getting silly.
Summary:

Here's a photo of what I didn't eat. I'm at an age and station in life that I will just not suffer lousy food. I'm hardly a gourmet or a food snob, but there are certainly standards, limits. My food was not good, none of it. I'd rather waste the six or seven bucks I paid for it than shove it into my face because it was in front of me. I figured I could go home and make a sandwich out of whatever was lying around and be much more satisfied than with this pile of abysmal fried flour coated, rubbery seafood scraps.
I'd rather eat Guy Fieri's lightly seasoned flip flop.
Like I said, Angel liked the chicken okay, the sides, not at all. Adam was at best, 'meh' about his. The consensus was that we could not think of any reason to ever go back. Better stuff is readily available, just about anywhere.

Hardee's Pork Chop Biscuit

10610 Old Highway 21
Hillsboro, Mo

I know, I know,  I said I was going to stop reviewing fast food places.
This was all Angel's idea, blame her.
In our weekly county paper we received the usual pile of glossy printed ads. The one for Hardee's caught my true love's eye.
Pork chop. . . Mmmm, pork chop.
She mentioned it to me on Thursday evening, then again on Friday. So as soon as I was up on Saturday I slipped into some sort of pants and shirt and then slid my feet into my old, comfy Crocs.
I made the five or six mile drive to town, then nosed the VW into the drive thru lane. I had my order in my head. So when the metal box addressed me I yelled it out.
Two Grilled Pork Chop Biscuit with Egg and Cheese, two Mile High Bacon Egg and Cheese Biscuits, two medium Tater Rounds, and two medium coffees.
There was no one in front of me so I drove right up to the window. In only a couple of minutes the window opened and coffees were passed through. I returned the favor by letting the young lady hold my debit card for a moment. By the time she was done with it, someone handed her a steaming bag.
Boy, that was quick.
The drive home was uneventful.

Mile High Bacon Egg and Cheese

Angel had just come in from tending to some of the boarders (dogs, not humans) She seemed happy to see me and was very pleased that I'd brought her some coffee. She usually doesn't get around to making her coffee until she's rotated all the dogs out at least once.
"What's with  the other biscuits?" She asked about the two mile highs.
"Just in case." I replied.
We each took our fair share and sat back in our recliners. Not much was said.
My own impressions were fairy positive. This was not mushed and reformulated meat, this seemed to be an actual, thin sliced, boneless pork chop. The flavor and texture were both there.
Angel said hers was good as well, but with some reservations. "I'm not much of a biscuit person."
I immediately called the most vicious attorney I could find and insisted we immediately file for a divorce, without prejudice, with the demand to leave her penniless and lonely for the rest of her natural life. Not a biscuit person? If I'd known that all those years ago. . .
Bottom line, she liked the pork chop part of it because it tasted like a pork chop.  I thought it was a pretty good breakfast sandwich, because I am a biscuit person.
So yeah, we can recommend it. It was much better than that Bologna and Velveeta thing Hardees offered a few months back. . .
Bonus, this time I didn't get sick!

KFC

12961 State Route 21
DeSoto, Mo.

I know, I know you're jealous, Why didn't I think of this? Jealous.
Valentine's day presents an eating out challenge. After Mother's Day, VD is about the biggest day to go out for dinner. We learned this a while back. Just about every decent place is packed with lovers, apologists and dog house denizens. So what does one do when one doesn't participate in Valentine's Day silliness?
Take home. It was Angel's idea, I kid you not.
We do this quite often on Christmas as well. No mess, no dishes, no fuss, enough food for a meal or two and maybe a late night snack.
The Food:
A bucket of 12 please.

Sides? Oh yeah.
Mac and cheese, mashed potatoes, slaw and what the heck, a dozen chocolate chip cookies.
Sometimes we try to get the roasted chicken. They don't always have much made. I prefer the roasted because it is not heavily breaded and they make it taste pretty darn good.
No such luck this trip. Oh well, it's a faux-holiday, celebrate.
Original recipe though, not extra crispy.
Angel made up the list, Adam made the drive. I made tea.
He was back in no time. Mmmm, biscuits.
The chicken was pretty fresh and moist, the sides were very, very good. Most of them anyhow.

KFC makes about the best mac and cheese, slaw and biscuits anywhere. The mashed potatoes, I'm less impressed with. I very much prefer a lumpy mashed potato. KFC overworks theirs. Too pasty, too thin in texture. The brown gravy, I can take or leave.
The biscuits are reheat-ready. Breakfast with a sausage patty and a slice of all-American cheese.
The Mac and cheese is drool-worthy. Thick, very thick and cheesy. They're not using that powdered cheese.
We've never been able to duplicate the slaw. We've tried, but it always comes up short. I've even driven to KFC just to get slaw to accompany something we're making at home.
A little bit vinegar, a little bit sweet, the cabbage and carrots are very fresh and crisp.
And then there's the cookies.
Angel loves these things, I rarely have them, being newly sweet-averse. KFC usually gives away a couple with a bucket, Angel ordered a dozen.
They're not huge and not complicated. After dinner I made some coffee, a weekend sin I allow myself, and grabbed a couple of them.
They were pretty good. I make better myself, but I rarely go to the bother, it's messy and requires us to have things in the pantry that we wouldn't have much other use for. Bagged CC cookies are usually dry and hard. KFC's, like my own, are soft and moist. Very good with an evening cup o' Joe.


A History Lesson:
It's impossible to talk much about KFC without bringing up the spork.
KFC did not invent the handy little utensil. Far from it. There are on file, similar designs of a combination spoon/fork also known as a 'foon', going

back as far as 1874. Various patents and trademark designs have been filed since then.
Of course the ubiquitous fork itself is a rather recent addition to dining. There were a few, two-pronged utensils before the 1600's, but they were used primarily to hold meat while carving or to pick up dainty orbs from high end dinner plates.  They did not appear as a regular part of a table setting until the mid seventeenth century.
Frankly, the spork is a more clever tool, a multi-tasker. It is by design, stronger than a fork and more precise than a spoon.
Most fast food places don't bother. Their stuff is hand-held. But KFC, which offers more realistic food, has mashed potatoes, beans, slaw, mac and cheese, hardly finger food. Rather than offer spoons and forks, they offer the cheaper, more utilitarian spork.
There are steel, bronze and silver sporks available. . . I'm thinking of getting some.
Summary:
I don't need to say much. We like KFC. They get almost everything right, quickly and with pretty good quality. They don't even offer French fries, so they are only 'fast' food in the sense that they prepare in bulk and serve up quickly. The price is higher than a McD's crapburger and fries meal, but you're certainly getting better quality and greater variety. It reheats nicely and makes everyone in the family happy. The perfect 'It's a holiday and I don't feel like spending the day cooking and cleaning up'  feast.

Hardee's Balogna and Velveeta Special!

In our weekly local paper, we found a coupon. Angel giggled with glee showing it to us. It described a new breakfast menu item, one that harked me back to my innocent and threadbare, hardscrabble youth.
Fried bologna, Velveeta 'cheese' on one of their signature biscuits.
Angel didn't actually want one, neither did Adam.
I had to know.
So early on Saturday (9:30 A.M.), I ventured out, I needed to go to the post office anyhow.
Background:
We had bologna quite often. We didn't call it that so it feels weird spelling it with a 'g' and ending it with an 'a'. So I am going to revert at this point to the colloquial, more familiar 'baloney'.
We had baloney quite often. My great uncle, O.C. Dyer* ran a store across from my grandmother's house. We lived with her for most of my first twelve or thirteen years.
Whenever we needed something Mom would send one of us to the store for it. Uncle O.C. had a huge ledger on the counter where he entered names and amounts, you could run a tab there. So all we had to to was to grab what we needed, or a pop, (soft drink) or occasionally a candy bar and take it up to the counter and he'd just write the amount down in the big book. I suppose he billed the folks later.
It was an old style store, two gas pumps out front, a big cooler for pop, a few isles of produce ad canned goods. There was even a hardware section, nails, screws, nuts and bolts, etc. There was a revolving toy rack and a candy section. The latter two is where I spent much of my time and meager allowance.
Off to the left was a full deli counter. A huge, shiny meat slicer and a widowed cooler that held all kinds of meats in cheeses in bulk form.
When we got baloney, it wasn't in a package, it was sliced to our desired thickness.
And lo, it was good.
Dad would fry some occasionally, cutting four long slits so it wouldn't concave so much as it cooked, then just plop it on a plate, usually with a fried egg alongside. I don't recall ever making a sandwich with fried baloney.
As for cheese, I don't have distinct memories. I believe we had American singles, but I don't recall a brand.
We had cold baloney sandwiches fairly often. Baloney sandwiches were cheap and easy to prepare, my mom's favored form of meal.
In the store itself, on any given workday, local laborers from the nearby sawmill would go to O.C.'s store for lunch. Baloney on a saltine was quite common, with a drizzle of hot sauce.
So yeah, I'm quite familiar with baloney. Even today, with all my wealth and class, having long escaped the thin times of my youth, I still enjoy a simple baloney sandwich. White bread, Miracle Whip, a sliced tomato a couple of slices (because it is so thinly sliced these days) of baloney and a slice of American cheese.
That's lunch on any day.
As for Velveeta, I certainly knew about it when I was young, I even liked it. But we could rarely afford such extravagances. Back then, name brands like Oscar Mayer and Velveeta were pretty much as unattainable as Rolex and Ferrari, and Oreo.
The Place:
In Hillsboro,  Hardee's is the anchor for all other eateries. It's been there longer than most and sits on a prime location, visible  from all directions, right beside one of the county seat's few traffic lights.
It's a popular place in the mornings, a favorite of many elderly groups. They congregate and read a paper or just talk and laugh among themselves over a cup of senior discount coffee.
I used to go there quite often on Saturday mornings myself. My book, some coffee and a sausage and egg biscuit with a side of tots.
Then I started this whole 'eat better' regimen a year or more back and my tastes and tolerances changed. The stuff there started to leave me queasy and irritable. It no longer tasted good like it once did. Now when I go out and have breakfast it is at a place that uses real eggs, real bacon, real hash browns. I can stomach that. Something fast food places use or do always leaves me with a bad taste in my mouth and a distinct and unpleasant series of noises from my tummy.
But, I knew I had to give this new offering a try, for the sake of educating you, my loyal fans.
The Food:
I had the coupon, I offered it up to the young lady with the headset. She punched eleventy-three buttons,

scanned the coupon and handed it back
"For here, coffee, and you better throw a sausage and egg biscuit on there as well." I shouted quietly.
The extra biscuit was in case the baloney and cheese proved to be awful.
I waited, holding my book. September is 'Translated Japanese Crime Novel' month for me.
I went ahead and sat down after a while at a table beside a window and positioned my plastic number, 56, pointed toward the counter. Hardee's delivers to your table if you make them.
It arrived pretty soon, the thin young lady seemed pleased with her gift to me. "Can I get you anything else?" She pleasantly offered.
I declined further services, plucked a napkin out of the dispenser and started unwrapping things.
Sure enough the baloney was thin, wafer thin and there was only one slice. Well okay. The Velveeta looked like it had been put on the biscuit with a backhoe. It was piled high, gloppy, dripping out the sides.
I studied it, analyzed it, and bit in. Yep, baloney and Velveeta. Nothing wrong with that.
Then it hit me. That metallic, greasy taste in my mouth.
"Eureka! It's the biscuit!" I shouted in my mind.
I had two more bites to make sure I could recall it later. I then shoved it aside and unwrapped the spare biscuit. It was better, but still I could taste it, a sickly bitter taste. Two bites, maybe three, then I pushed it aside as well.
At least I had the tots and coffee.
The coffee was as old and bitter as my sister.
At least I had tots.
So I tossed them back one at a time as I read. Most of them. A strange noise emanated from my belly.
"Eureka! It's the tots!" I shouted in my mind.
I couldn't sit there any more, I was no longer enjoying this quiet round of Dennis time. I closed my book, gathered my trash, dumped it and left.
Summary:
Awful, simply awful. By the time I got home I was full-on nauseous. I just can't eat this fast food crap anymore.
But at least it was good to reminisce.

________________

*I only ever knew him as O.C. that's what everybody called him. It stood for 'Ovit Crawley'.