How to Eat Cheaply While Avoiding Cheap Chicken?
Posted by Stefanie Gans / Thursday, December 29th, 2011
It’s a glossy’s good friend. An issue that performs well on newsstands and remains in glove boxes for quick reference. March will bring Northern Virginia Magazine’s bargain dining cover story and I’m on the hunt.
It’s a theme that hasn’t changed much over the years, as a fellow food writer blurted out to me, “Cheap Eats means Asian.”
But I want to look past pho and bánh mì, hot pots and fried rice. I also want to find more than Peruvian chicken and chicken tikka masala.
In fact, I really don’t want to write about chicken at all. Cheap chicken that is.
I found a patriot in Frances Lam earlier this year as he refused to endorse our cheap chicken epidemic:
“…Chicken that is mass-produced at unbelievable scale, poisoning the earth and water for hundreds of miles, that is treated brutally, that goes through a disassembly line so fast and furious that it injures 1 out of every 3 poorly paid workers who works on it.”
But what’s a dining editor to do? Not visit perfectly tasty restaurants that happen to serve cheap chicken?
I want to find the best area eats at a fair price, but should that outweigh the conditions in which the bird came to my plate?
It’s something I think about as I taste the flavorful skin at Super Chicken in Falls Church. Is the price worth, well, the price?
Help us find well-sourced, cheap eats. Email tips to fooddesk@northernvirginiamag.com.
Photo courtesy Shtterstock.com/Christian Mokri
Tags: bargain dining, cheap chicken, cheap eats, chicken, food, Francis Lam, Gut Check, Northern Virginia, Northern Virginia Magazine, NoVA, Stefanie Gans