I work right now in Central Indiana, Terre Haute. It’s a town right on I-70, 60,000 people. And I sh** you not, I’ve just had the best chicken parmesan sandwich I’ve ever had in my life.
Let’s backtrack a bit here. Let’s go like, for instance, anywhere. Chicken parmesans suck thoroughly. Let’s start with Colorado. Those motherfu**ers at first didn’t know what I was talking about when I asked for a chicken parmesan, and then they tried serving me that sliced sh**. Sliced fu**ing chicken, like that deli turkey bullsh**. The pizza out in Colorado sucked too.
The pizza in my hometown, South Bend, Indiana, is pretty good, but as with anywhere, the chicken parmesan is a very SPECIAL, divisive issue. Take this one restaurant experience I had, when I was like eight years old. I ordered the “chicken parmesan,” not sandwich, just the dish, the entree, at some random Italian dive, and the look I gave my father upon receiving the item must have made him question the validity of having kids. The thing not only had no flavor, and no exotic veggies surrounding it… also, it had no bread.
Now, South Bend is a crossroads of sorts (and indeed, Indiana is called the “crossroads of America,” whatever, I just try to get drunk as much as possible, basically). There was a dude from Jersey. I asked him if a chicken parmesan was big back there. Is a chicken parmesan big back there. He gave me this look of unprecedented, volcanic disbelief, at the stupidity of my question. OBVIOUSLY, OBVIOUSLY, chicken parmesan is soon to replace oxygen as the primary respiratory source for humanity. [1] Well, sh**, you could have fooled me, seeing as in Colorado they can’t even make a pizza, let alone a sandwich. [2]
But then, that pretty much sums up my hometown. You should have known, dude. What are you doing breathing oxygen, why don’t you, like, look like Popeye, and sh**.
Well, anyway, this place I currently work at has this special breading flour for the parmy, and I must say it’s glorious. It ends up being a grilled chicken breast, but the flour itself contains cheese, so when it goes onto the flat top grill, over a considerable amount of butter (to prevent sticking), the cheddar and such cheeses end up melting and crisping up, sort of like potato chips or something, on the outside of the breast. Then, when it’s pretty much done cooking or feeling pretty firm, it goes with a pizza sauce and a shredded mozzarella into a baking oven of about 500 degrees, for about three or four minutes or so, just to sew things up. And so, we have come to our destination.
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[1] Interesting I mention the East Coast here: apparently in Philly this one purportedly “authentic” steak deli actually uses Cheez Whiz as its primary topping.
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[2] This granted might not be completely their fault: rumor has it that the Whole Foods I worked at in Colorado used to actually import water from the East Coast for making its dough, because of its higher mineral content, toward the pizza, which by and large was indeed of some regard.