NPR: Best fried chicken in the country
Source: National Public Radio
I missed this somehow last week: the revival of Willie Mae's:
Willie Mae's, open from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. six days a week, stands on a distressed corner in the city's Treme neighborhood. Fifteen minutes before opening time, out-of-state vehicles and taxis start bumping down St. Anne, a battered road warped from bearing waist-deep water for weeks after Hurricane Katrina.
Tourists, food critics, reporters and local chicken connoisseurs pick past abandoned buildings to reach the culinary landmark.
Seaton, now 92, blends the flavors of her native Mississippi with the Creole influences of New Orleans, and her fried chicken recipe comes from a mysterious someone she's never identified — even to her family.
Her great-granddaughter, Kerry Seaton, says the secret is a wet batter seasoned only with salt and pepper, which keeps the skin crispy and the meat creamy. In 2005, Seaton won an "America's Classic" award from the James Beard Foundation, which recognizes local restaurants that carry on the traditions of great regional cuisine.
Just months after she received the Beard award, Seaton's restaurant was destroyed by Hurricane Katrina. Seaton packed up her bronze medal and evacuated, first to Shreveport, La., then to Houston.
Then, anxious about her business, she boarded a plane without telling her family and made her way back to New Orleans — where police from the city's homeless division found her huddled in front of her restaurant.
"She told them about the James Beard award, and they called the James Beard Foundation and the James Beard Foundation called me," says Lolis Eric Elie, a friend of Willie Mae's and a founding director of the Southern Foodways Alliance. The group recruited foodies from all over the country to volunteer to rebuild Willie Mae's.
