God Bless Deep Fried America

By Author: pangsiyan
Total Articles: 130
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The Heart Attack Cafe, San Diego County Fair, California.

I recently spent a day walking around the San Diego County Fair. Threading my way through the crowds, I came across a giant food trailer called The Heart Attack Cafe. As you see above, it was painted in lurid yellow and green and carried a picture of a nurse cheerily brandishing a defibrillator. It was lunchtime and the stall was attracting a decent amount of custom, so I joined the queue and stood for a moment to review the menu.

As I did, people squeezed past me carrying bathtub containers of soda-pop and trays laden with deep fried garlic, deep fried cheese, cinnamon chips and bacon wrapped in a thick coating of sweet chocolate. And everyone had some unassuming little deep fried doughy balls that, judging by the juices running down the ample chins of the people eating them, were bursting in their mouths to release a centre of pure, unadulterated butter.

This might not come as news to all of you but it was a bit of a shocker for me (I like the addition of cream cheese in this recipe just in case there wasn't quite enough full fat dairy produce ...
... in the original) and I've stared down some pretty challenging food in my time. On this occasion, I retired to the relative safety of the fair's main food area to decide between something meaty on a stick or a Gyro (Yee-ro), the American equivalent of a doner kebab and muse on how the Americans have taken the simple act of deep frying food and turned it into something of an art form.

Earlier in the year KFC launched the Double Down, which replaced the potentially healthy bread-like portion of a cheese and bacon sandwich with two slices of deep fried chicken breast. Down in Arizona, the Heart Attack Grill (there seems to be a pattern emerging here) offers "Flatliner Fries" which come coated in beef gravy or cheese. These accompany a "Quadruple Bypass Burger" containing four patties of meat and eight, count 'em, eight slices of cheese. People over 350lbs eat for free.

So far I've missed out on the four pattie experience, but I have encountered some interesting deep fried foods in the United States.

drive from www.guardian.co.uk