Dear Samara Kalk Derby: Fat = Flavor!

I've seen flyers for the new Indian restaurant Spice'N'Curry around town and was happy to see a review of it at 77 Square. Then I read this:

That initial visit was disappointing food-wise as well. The vegetable pakora ($3.75) was a harbinger, a disjointed mess of vegetables dominated by onion. Another appetizer, chili chicken ($7.95), which we ordered as an entree, was dominated by dark-meat chicken along with green peppers, scallions and onions. The green chilies and curry leaves described on the menu were undetectable.

Was the writer being critical of the dish having dark-meat chicken in as well as having no trace of chilies and curry leaves? My answer came a few paragraphs later.

Although the meat in the perfectly nuanced chicken curry ($10.95) could have been cut into smaller pieces, at least it was choice white meat.

"This has to be Samara Kalk Derby," I thought to myself. And sure enough it was. This is the same person who was shocked to get hot giardiniera on an Italian beef ordered "hot" when that's the standard in Chicago where both she and Italian beef hail from.

So now she is saying that white meat chicken is "choice" while dark meat is – what? – poor people food? Gee thanks. Next time I make a curry with dark meat chicken (which is my default choice) I'll be sure to think about how much better a person Samara Kalk Derby is than me. Maybe next time the chef at Spice'N'Curry can whiten that dark meat with whey protein concentrate and whey protein isolate. Is Derby saying the cuisines who (gasp!) utilize the whole chicken are inferior to she and her fellow breasts lovers who only eat the pure, choice parts of the bird? I can just imagine her recoiling in horror from a chicken leg like a coastie co-ed does from an omelet that isn't made from egg whites alone. Ewwww!

By "choice" I presume she means "that part of the bird which has almost no fat and so is nearly flavorless and dries out easily but it has no big nasty fat molecules which for a fatphobic person like me is perfect because, ya know, fat kills and I can eat it without feeling like I'm trying to give myself a heart attack."

People who aren't brainwashed Americans don't let every part of a chicken go to waste except the breast and know that dark meat tastes better because it has flavor because it has more fat. The choice part of a chicken is the leg because it has the most fat and flavor, not because it panders to some bullshit trend which instills fear into eaters.

Fat = flavor! This is why children not brainwashed by their parents into thinking that if they eat dark meat chicken they'll die the next day always grab drumsticks. This is also why you can batter or bread anything, stick it in a deep fat fryer, and sell tons of the stuff. Fat = flavor! Just as the Scots.

So can we get a food critic who actually paid attention when eating Italian beef while in Chicago and who understands that the least flavorful, driest cut of meat is not "choice"?