Pittsburgh sticks with loving 'City Chicken'
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City Chicken made with Giant Eagle City Chicken from a recipe from Tom Friday's Market on the North Side.
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I wasn't born in Pittsburgh, but I've lived here long enough to almost be a Pittsburgher.
My credentials sometimes surprise even me.
For instance, I actually have fond memories of eating "City Chicken."
Real Pittsburghers, especially older Pittsburghers, know what I'm talking about.
City Chicken is a dish that dates back at least to the Depression days of the 1930s. My experience goes back only to the late 1980s. I'd just moved here to work at The Pittsburgh Press, where, with many of my colleagues, I used to lunch at a tiny tavern tucked away on nearby Market Street called Zeuger's. There, working my way through the daily specials recommended by a waitress straight out of Pixsburgh Central Casting, I was referred to as "Hon" and first experienced local favorite dishes such as Virginia Spots, which turned out to be fish.
City Chicken turned out to be ... not chicken.
Rather, it was -- it is -- chunks of meat on a stick. I believe Zeuger's served the classic combination of pork and veal, but just pork and even beef can be City Chicken, too.
The idea and the name went back to a time when chicken was more expensive than other meats, especially in the city, and so these other meats were substituted. Sometimes the skewers were referred to as Mock Chicken Drumsticks. That chicken would be scarce and expensive is hard to imagine now, but plenty of people of a certain age remember when chicken was an only-on-Sunday special dinner.
City Chicken is known in other cities, including Detroit and Cleveland, but Pittsburgh passionately claims it (the recipe on epicurious.com is titled "Pittsburgh City Chicken"). Especially many of the many who've moved to other places (everything but their hearts) wax nostalgic over it in the same breath as they miss Chipped-Chopped Ham and Wedding Soup.
City Chicken may not be as well known as those iconic Pittsburgh foods, but like them, it lives on, showing up here and there on menus at restaurants and senior centers, even kebabbed and wrapped up, ready to cook, at butcher shops and grocery stores in the region. I bought a pound of it -- classic pork and veal cubes, already on the sticks -- for about $6 at the Giant Eagle Market District store in Bethel Park.
First Published July 7, 2011 12:00 am
