HUDS Chicken Tempura

The men of the DeWolfePack used to look forward to popcorn chicken days in the dining hall, eagerly checking the Dining Services' online menu at the start of each week and telling themselves, "Cancel all lunchtime meetings and prepare to skip Latin American Economy section on Tuesday because I'll be busy putting breaded, deep-fried chicken in my mouth. OMFG yes I will," other statements like that, usually with subtle, unintentionally homoerotic undertones. Just like almost everything we say or think.

Popcorn chicken is good, no doubt, and we've all made many a lunch out of a pile of crispy-brown strips, half a bottle of barbecue sauce, and french fries stuffed into all of the extra spaces between chicken pieces. But really, for all its passability with the condiments and satisfying greasiness (two nouns in that sentence that shouldn't be, and probably aren't, real nouns), popcorn chicken is really not all that different from regular chicken; and after pasta, regular chicken is the most boring food on the planet.

Luckily, as we all sat around worshipping a false, secretly really boring idol, the merciful gods of food decided to have pity on us. One day last spring - I can't remember the date or the time, just the taste and a feeling of overwhelming happiness - we walked into the dining hall and felt the scales lift from our eyes and the shackles drop from our taste buds. It was crispy. It was juicy. It was salty and fried-y and ultra-processed. It was HUDS Chicken Tempura.

Normally, chicken tempura looks something like this on the left (if, instead of a college dining hall, you're eating it at a Thai restaurant)...

Or like this to the right, if you're eating it at a Japanese restaurant or some place where your chicken looks exactly like shrimp. Chicken tempura is good white people food at Asian restaurants: you want to order something other than California rolls/Pad Thai/straight up veggie rolls, but you don't really want anything that couldn't easily be frozen and packaged by the people who make Hot Pockets. You get the chicken tempura, which is like KFC except cut into thin strips, fried in an even lighter and crispier outside, and somehow way greasier. Overall, it's a pretty solid dish and is a fairly dependable choice. Except in Harvard dining halls.

That's because HUDS chicken tempura is an extremely solid dish and a marriage-worthy choice (not settling here, either: dependable, but also sexy, successful, not going to gain weight, and totally loves you back). That's because HUDS chicken tempura is nirvana in disguise. That's because HUDS chicken tempura is basically the McDonald's Chicken McNugget.

Your liberally-educated outrage is totally legitimate, so let it out: animal rights, globalization, rising obesity, food classism, working conditions, Morgan Spurlock. I know, I know, this shit is bad for you, but suspend your disapproval for a second. Chicken McNuggets - and the chicken nugget in general - are really fucking good.

Chicken nuggets are one of the original smart foods, invented in the 1950s by a professor at Cornell. They're pure science: chicken ground up into tiny pieces, then pasted back together with salts and skin, breaded, and deep fried. They can be molded into dinosaur shapes. They are easily anthropomorphized.


Years ago, Chicken McNuggets were one of my favorite foods - the perfect post-game baseball meal and minimum day after-school lunch treat. The nuggets, the sauce, the french fries, the soda, and the toy: for an eight year-old, they made up the pefect five course meal. Then I read Fast Food Nation and starting caring about my body and the world and became a vegetarian and shit. Times were dark in America, and there was no change I could believe in.

I thank you, HUDS chicken tempura, for tasting of better days and bringing light and flavor back into my life. You have reminded me that the greatest joys in life are selfish and self-destructive. Also fried and dipped in barbecue sauce.

-GD