Best Places to Eat Fried Chicken in St. Louis, Missouri

Where would we be without the invention of the fork? The ancient Greeks had a two-pronged kitchen fork that was used to keep the meat from slipping around while they carved it, but they still used their hands to eat. Chopsticks go all the way back five thousand years in China. The fork didn’t become commonly used in Europe until the Middle Ages, and then it was usually reserved for the rich and upper class. In France they thought that using a fork was pretentious. In India people only used their rights hands to eat with, the left one reserved for wiping off excrement. Even today, it’s a rarity to see a left-handed person around. So eating food with your fingers has been, and still is, the most popular way of eating around the world.

This brings us to the subject of “finger foods,” or more specifically, fried chicken. Fried chicken was one of America’s original finger foods. In the rural south, a piece of fried chicken, along with an apple or other piece of fruit, stored in a shoebox for easy portability, became the first “box lunches.” The chicken was usually leftover from the previous Sunday. Sunday was the day that you invited the reverend over after church for the biggest and best meal of the week.