Fried chicken is easy, perhaps too easy, to romanticize. In his book Fried Chicken: An American Story, John T. Edge, the food editor of the Arkansas-based Oxford-American magazine and contributor of other gastro-torial type work for Gourmet and Saveur, quotes the Chinese philosopher who asked, "What is patriotism, but nostalgia for the foods of our youth?"
   In our youth, we didn't have an excessive amount of fried chicken at home, but one mother in our carpool often had a take-out bucket with her that would be continuing its ride even after my sister and I had been dropped off, and it always smelled delicious.
   Now that's some pitiful nostalgia for you, but it's hard to get romantic about take-out, especially somebody else's. It's easier if the take-out chicken comes from David Family Kitchen, at the corner of Broadway and 23rd Street in Little Rock. We've been to plenty of tailgate parties where the fried chicken has come from the Wal-Mart Supercenter, but, especially in the medium of home-cooking, this seems a slight to everybody, the bearer included.
   And besides, large-chain delicatessens might have a Ms. Pearl, but chances are slim that you'd get as high a degree of interaction with her.
   At David Family Kitchen, the degree of interaction with Ms. Pearl, who will prepare your order, is endearingly high. She will negotiate a chicken order with you over the phone (501-371-0141 )-- if you want to feed four people, how about three pieces of everything, breasts, wings, thighs, drumsticks ($15)? She will establish pick-up protocol -- better to assume there will be a fixed point in time the chicken will be ready and avoid asking if there would be a special time to come for it. "Yeah," might be the answer you deserve, delivered in good nature, "because I got to cook it, and it ain't ready yet."
   Just like someone's sense of humor can often be measured in the way others try to make him laugh, horse sense can be appreciated in the way people try to appeal to it. So we don't know if we'd rather have remained sensical in the eyes of Ms. Pearl and not folded down a stray corner of the foil she'd used to cover our to-go tin of chicken.
   There is nothing you can come behind Ms. Pearl and do that she hasn't thought of: Of course, she left it vented to avoid sweat; we thought we had been rushing her. "Look at him turning down that corner," she said to herself. But our gaffe earned us a lesson, and twice as much Ms. Pearl time.
   The chicken underneath the foil was just as sensible. This isn't hot chicken, with its furious red dye job, it's fried -- you're not aware of spice but you're not aware of its absence either. There was a matte quality to the crunchy coating, but not to the point that it came off all in one bite. The meat was easy to find and to enjoy, not so much juice to cause a dribble, but, thanks to Ms. Pearl's packaging technique, not so much as to moisten the batter, either.
   Expertise in the area of chicken wings confers a different kind of status from facility, in the way of Ms. Pearl and countless other cooks, in the area of fried chicken. But it's an expertise worth appreciating. The approval of those working the counter at Wingstop (11321 W. Markham Street, Little Rock; 2913 Lakewood Village Drive, North Little Rock) is much easier to earn, and therefore possibly not as valuable, as Ms. Pearl's, and, from a chain operation, a nifty trick like flaring a corner could more accurately be interpreted as inattention. (At Wingstop, the wings are packaged in notchclose to-go containers, sometimes two flavors in one, separated by a few sheets of waxy paper.) The time estimate on preparation was almost comically precise: 14 minutes. And Wingstop can be just as helpful in determining the count for a crowd -- a good place to start might be a 35-pack ($16.99), which earns a choice of three flavors.
   On a recent combination, the smell of the barbecued wings overpowered that of the Original Hot and Hawaiian varieties, but those flavors won the taste test. It could have been the power of suggestion, but the Hawaiian wings had the delicious, pineapple-y kitsch of a novelty appetizer from a block party in the 1950s. And the Original Hot had the telltale orangey-red to let you know it had steeped in a peppery sauce, but not as much of the vinegar that can make your nose wrinkle.
   The David Family Kitchen and Wingstop are each aptly named -- wings being a stopgap, fried chicken being sustenance to linger over, as at a crowded kitchen table. But either one will win acclaim, or, at the very least, the envy of whoever might be sharing with you the car ride but not the meal. Spork Report is a monthly take on takeout. E-mail your favorite Styrofoam stop-offs to:
   

kbrazzel@arkansasonline.com

This story was published Friday, July 07, 2006