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For the Colonel, It Was Finger‐Lickin’

For the Colonel, It Was Finger‐Lickin’
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September 9, 1976, Page 46Buy Reprints
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A small boy, seated at a table in Kentucky Fried Chicken store in Greenwich Village paled and almost dropped the extra‐crispy drumstick he was about to bite into yesterday as he looked up and saw none other than the Kentucky Colonel himself, Harland Sanders, every inch his television image with flowing white hair, trim goatee and blazing white suit.

Looking over to the boy's mother who was managing a thin smile of disbelief, the colonel boomed, “Ah, madam, I bet you never thought it was true. But you, boy, you never doubted it, did you?”

And then he handed the child signed photograph of himself.

Autographing buckets and boxes filled with the product he created, the colonel entered the kitchen without a by‐your‐leave. The manager of this company‐owned unit, Thaddeus Singleton, looked up and, without batting an eye, said, “Come right in, colonel, you're always welcome here,” little suspecting what was about to happen.

Criticizes Cooking of Chicken

This unannounced inspection visit to the Kentucky Fried Chicken store on the Avenue of the Americas near Eighth Street followed a prebirthday luncheon for the colonel at the Coach House. Today the colonel's 86th birthday will be celebrated with a luncheon at “21.” But driving back from lunch yesterday in the colonel's limousine, I noticed this Kentucky Fried store, at which I had purchased some of the worst fried chicken I've ever eaten in my life.

After hearing him expound on the origins of the chain of stores he had founded and his general unhappiness with it now that it is under the direction of Heublein, the company, asked him to go into the store with me and see if his observations agreed with mine, and, if so, what was wrong.

Once in the kitchen, the colonel walked over to a vat full of frying chicken pieces and announced, ‘That's much too black. It should be golden brown. You're frying for 12 minutes—that's six minutes too long. What's more, your frying fat should have been changed a week ago. That's the worst fried chicken I've ever seen. Let me see your mashed potatoes with gravy, and how do you make them?”

Colonel Called a “Purist”

When Mr. Singleton explained that he first mixed boiling water into the instant powdered potatoes, the colonel interrupted. “And then you have wallpaper paste,” he said. “Next suppose you add some of this brown gravy stuff and then you have sludge.” “There's no way anyone can get me to swallow those potatoes,” he said after tasting some. “And this cole slaw. This cole slaw! They just won't listen to me. It should he chopped, not shredded, and it should be made with Miracle Whip. Anything else turns gray. And there should be nothing in it but cabbage. No carrots!”

Mr. Singleton replied, “I just do what I'm told,. Sir,” and Colonel Sanders then said gently to the nowstunned manager, “Well, it's not your fault. You're just working for company that doesn't know what it's doing.”

“Tco bad, because it gives you a bad reputation,” he said by way of farewell.

Anthony Tortorici, director of public affairs for the Kentucky Fried Chicken division of Heublein, said later when reached by telephone, “We're very grateful to have the colonel around to keep us on our toes, but he is a purist and his standards were all right when he was operating just a few stores. But we have over 5,500 now and that means more than 10,000 fry cooks of all ages and abilities.

“Raw chicken turns customers off, so we play it safe and fry at lower temperatures for a longer time than . the colonel likes. And we think carrots add color and eye appeal to cole slaw.”

“The Colonel has very high standards of personal conduct and for his products, but we need wider parameters to adapt to the real‐life world. But I guarantee that if you go back into that store, you'll see a big improvement.”

Chicken Rated by Expert

Colonel Sanders, who is paid $200,000 a year to do advertising and public relations for Kentucky Fried Chicken, expressed equally strong opinions on the meal at the highly esteemed Coach House as he discussed his interest in food.

He ordered black bean soup, which he thought should have been thicker and heavily laced with sherry instead of madeira; mushrooms with chicken livers that he ordered pink, but which he did not like because they had been sautéed instead of crisply fried; a salad that he did like although he preferred French roguefort cheese to the feta‐ used, and pecan pie, which he thought was not as good as one he made with lemon juice “to add life to the Karo syrup filling.”

Of the Coach House fried chicken ('Give me the middle wing joint; it's the best part of the chicken'), his verdict was, “Very good, but it would be better with more salt and my seasoning.”

His favorite food of the day was the cornbread baked in sticks, of which he ate three and carried six back to his hotel. “That's the best cornbread I've ever had made by Yankee up North,” he declared to the waiter. “Not too much sugar or flour in with the meal.”

Refusing a glass of wine the colonel explained, “Wine tastes like gasoline, and now that I read about all the arsenic in California wines, I'm glad I don't drink it. I have 14 more years to go to finish the century and I want to take care of myself so I make it.”

He explained that he was on no‐aging diet that required him to eat a can of sardines every morning.

, Having traveled in 44 countries ('I'll never go to India. I don't want to see people sleeping in the streets”), the colonel prefers American food and most especially that of the Southeast. “We season our food more than folks in other parts of the country, he said. “I've never been struck by French food. Only the sauces are good. I never have chance to eat in Italy any place but in a Hilton Hotel.”

But he did add that he used to work for a German farmer as a teenager and did like German food.

Dislikes New Products

When asked what he thought of such new Kentucky Fried Chicken products as extra‐crispy chicken and•. the barbecue‐style ribs and chicken,. he said, “Now why did you have to ask me that? They really ,gag me, that's what I think of them.”

And when told that many Kentucky Fried Chicken salesclerks packed hot chicken in buckets well in advance of its sale, he almost fumed. If they do that, he said, the chicken will have a terrible smell.

“You know, that company is just too big to control now,” he said, “I'm sorry I sold it back in 1964. It would have been smaller now, but a lot better. People see me up there doing those commercials and they wonder how I could ever let such products bear my name. It's downright .embarrassing.”

“That's the worst fried chicken I've ever seen,” said the founder of Kentucky Fried Chicken when he visited one of its stores. And he also faulted the mashed potatoes and the cole slaw.

The New York Times/Carl T. Gosselt

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