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Our first sponsor here at Anger Burger sent along a message that my partner Mike and I were to eat anywhere we wanted on his dime, provided that:

A) It is under $50

B) I must write about the experience on Anger Burger

After narrowing a list down to four choices, I realized that only fear of being a tourist held me back from immediately high-tailing it over to Roscoe’s.  Famous most famously for being where Snoop Dog took Larry King¹ who then split after eating precisely one bite of chicken and 1/8th of a waffle.  Whaaat?  I don’t care if King’s cardiologist was sitting right next to him, no human alive can eat only a single bite of fried chicken.  That shit ain’t right.

If you don’t already know, Mike and I recently lived in Cincinnati for about 18 months.  Upon being seated at Roscoe’s we both looked around and in confusion I said, “This is more like Cincinnati than Cincinnati was.”  It’s a moderately run-down but well-used old diner, dark and sticky, but doing cracker-jack business at 2 in the afternoon on a Tuesday.  The menu is short and sweet: chicken, mostly; waffles, secondly; soul food, third.  Most people, by my observation, ordered chicken.  But I’m getting ahead of myself.

I’d read about Roscoe’s drink concoctions, but had forgotten until we arrived and I saw these plastic tumblers of nuclear waste being shuttled to other tables with quartz-regularity.  There is the Sun Rise (OJ and lemonade), the Sunset (fruit punch and lemonade) and the Eclipse (OJ, fruit punch and lemonade).  Oh, and the Lisa’s Delight, which is an Arnold Palmer to everyone else in L.A., but just one further indication that perhaps Roscoe’s isn’t in L.A. at all.

I of course had to have a Sunset: this thing tastes like a liquid Jolly Rancher.  I nursed the cup over the entire meal, eventually feeling quite ill (more on that later) no doubt in large part due to the 16 oz. of pure high-fructose corn syrup I’d downed.  Dang! The worst part is that I couldn’t stop. It was like each drink brought me closer to being actually hydrated, and yet, as the burn of sugar faded from my throat, I’d be that much further away.  I imagine this is what it is like to be dying of dehydration while floating on the open ocean, eventually sneaking mouthfuls of seawater to quench yourself even though you know its going to kill you.

Meanwhile, I ordered a #2 on the menu: ¼ a chicken “smothered in gravy & onions,” and 2 waffles.  Mike had a #1: the same thing, minus the gravy.

I feel the need to address what is certain to be the question arising at this point: why chicken and waffles?  On a practical level, I don’t know what the answer is — the guy that started the whole thing is from Harlem, and perhaps those folks know better than I do.  But on a visceral level, you must understand that these are delicious together.  Bites of peppery, salty, greasy chicken followed by sweet waffle? C’mon!  It’s like bacon and pancakes.

I didn’t get a shot of my gravy-chicken because I thought Mike got it in this shot.  Whoops.

I had also read a review that the Roscoe’s waffles were “as bad” as Waffle House waffles.  Now, Waffle House waffles shouldn’t even qualify as breakfast food — they are nothing  less than vanilla cake batter poured into a waffle iron.  Light and crispy, each waffle is the equivalent of eating a cupcake.  And that’s before you put the syrup on.  And we love them.  Roscoe’s', on the other hand, are a strange beast.  They were a lot denser than they appeared to be, and in fact were borderline doughy. Despite this unexpected heartiness, they were excellent specimens, complexly flavored and able to hold their own even when topped with pieces of fried chicken and gravy.

The aftermath.

And a word on the “gravy & onions” touted in the menu: it should maybe just read “onion gravy.”  I was expecting a heap of individual, soft fried onions along with some gravy.  Nope.  Just a well-flavored, greyish, peppery gravy that they ladle over hot friend chicken.  It was delightful, even if a royal pain in the fucking ass to eat without it all over yourself.

By the time we left we agreed that we’d ordered way, way too much food.  A single piece of chicken and a single waffle would have been sufficient (#18 on the menu), but these things never reveal themselves until too late.  And we paid for it.  Both of us were unable to eat anything else for the rest of the entire day (for reals) and I woke at 4am with the most incredible, epic indigestion I’ve ever had.  It was a rough night.  But?  I’d do it again.  I probably will do it again.  And soon.

¹This is not the Roscoe’s location we went to.  Sorry.  This is actually the exact location we went to — skip ahead to 4:30 on the video.