Sallow
The Big Bad Wolf.
With American Capitalism.
A Chicken War in New York, Where Afghans Rule the Roost
Ruth Fremson/The New York Times
By DAN BILEFSKY
Published: February 13, 2011
Abdul Haye, the self-styled Colonel Sanders of New Yorks Afghan community, has declared a fried chicken war.
The Kennedy Fried Chicken in Corona is one of an estimated 350 Afghan-owned chicken restaurants in New York City.
He has armed himself with an unwritten secret recipe that he claims allows him to fry the best bird in town. His main weapon, he says, is ownership of the trademark for the Kennedy Fried Chicken brand, which has spawned hundreds of imitators as far south as Georgia, and has become to oily drumsticks what the ubiquitous Rays name once was to New York pizza.
That Kennedy, named after the former president, was itself a deliberate imitation of Kentucky Fried Chicken, down to those familiar initials and that it had its own trademark battle a generation ago seems to make little difference to Mr. Haye, 38. A wired and wiry resident of Whitestone, Queens, he began working as a chicken fryer when he was 17, soon after he immigrated in 1989, and describes his rivals with ire similar to that he reserves for the Taliban.
>o Snip
Hunched over a plate of lamb chops at his favorite Afghan restaurant in Queens, he shook his head and sighed: You know, Afghans dont even like eating fried chicken.
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/14/nyregion/14chicken.html