Consider the Cannoli: Subjective Preferences and Conversations about Geek Media

[Dannyalcatraz]

I would imagine if you want good fried chicken here in the states, you do NOT go to a chain franchise, but you get something authentic from the South.

Depends on what you want.

Personally, I like several of the chains’ take on fried chicken. My early childhood in 1970s NOLA was all about Church’s & Popeye’s. When we started moving around, we found KFC & Grandy’s. And over the past few years, we’ve tried Golden Chick and Chicken Express.

Each has their food and bad points, so we vary which ones we hit. But KFC’s quality dropped off recently, so we’ve dropped them from our rotation. Chicken Express’ sides have been declining in quality, so we don’t go there as often. Grandy’s locations nearest us disappeared, sooooo…

In contrast, I can only remember a few hyped non-chain places where I genuinely liked their fried chicken, and a couple of those have gone under. Others, we no longer live near.

So I’m actually happy to start experimenting with the Korean take on it. The one issue that’s popping up is the non-Western traditional butchery. In a typical American chicken place, your main pieces will be breasts, wings, thighs and drumsticks. In Korean places, they cut the pieces smaller, based on “lucky” butchery traditions. That makes it harder for those unfamiliar to pick out what’s dark meat or white meat. While I strongly prefer thighs, I’ll eat any fried chicken, TBH. But my mom actively dislikes dark meat, so it’s a real problem for her.

 

[Warpiglet-7]

 

[Ruin Explorer]

It's a terribly overrated pastry.

Right? What's even the point!

the crunchy fried shell and soft filling is simply a bad form for a pastry

Correct. It's no almond croissant.

I have only had cannoli from the range of It's Ok, to It's pretty Good. Never terrible, Never Great.

I don't think I've even had cannoli I'd consider "good". Or terrible. Just "ok" repeatedly. Even the cannoli that were supposedly (according to my boss, a woman of the world, appreciator of manifold pastries) "really good" were like, exactly the same as all the other cannoli I'd ever had. Hard, squidgy, cold, didn't taste of all that much, not pleasant but not horrid.

And yeah, thankfully they're rarer in the UK, but people have tried to convince me I don't like them just because I never had the right one.

All that said, I have experienced being wrong about geek media and indeed seeing why people liked it. I mean, Stephen Universe, I watched like 40 episodes before realizing it was cannoli to me (sorry SU bros), despite obviously being quite clever in some ways and having a cool visual style, but ghastly, awful, Supernatural, sometime in like S2, I think I did "get it", and somehow (during the pandemic, this would never have happened in real time), I managed to plough through all 15 seasons and... I did like it. I do like those boys and the angel and indeed most of the other characters.