Fast Food Restaurants That Did Not Make It

I grew up with slow food. My mother cooked our food on wood-burning stoves and later coal burning and that stove helped heat the house. Later when electricity came walking down the road one pole at a time she switched to electricity.

The fast-food industry -- they prefer to be called quick serve -- has risen in my lifetime. These businesses are always looking for the next great food to serve or how to prepare usual food in a more exciting manner to put the butts in the chairs.

This ongoing search by the ever resourceful Capitalists gives rise to many failures that dot the culinary landscape like craters on the face of the man in the moon.

The Grinning Gizzard served chicken, turkey, emu, and ostrich gizzards. They offered sushi, gizzard kebabs, popcorn gizzard, pop goes the gizzard and gizzard fingers. Most people said they could not stomach or digest the cuisine. Tough noogies.

Liver is an animal organ that just doesn't receive the respect and admiration that T-bone and porterhouse steaks receive and they come from the same animal. I have never seen liver on the menu of the places I frequent and I have never heard anyone talk about ordering it. The Liver Quiver tried serving battered deep fat fried liver with a chutney of gooseberries, carrots, onions and polk berries and it did not sell. Why? Then they tried a liver cold cut but it turned out to be the wurst. KFC serves battered and deep fat fried livers cooked until they can do no harm. Livers Are Us could not make a go of it with a variegated menu of chicken liver, beef liver, swine liver, alligator liver, Gila monster liver and yak liver a specialty flown in from Europe. They offered baked, sliced, diced, boiled, BBQ, sushi, liver flavored mousse, kebobs, hummingbird liver pate and none of it sold. Imagine that. Such a disappointment.

Several entrepreneurs have tried to sell the public on the delightful entrees made from tongue. That's right, tongue. I like beef tongue. We butchered a beef animal each year on the farm and we ate the tongue. Without gagging. Without barfing. No one said Ewwwww and fainted to the floor. We thought it was good especially the way mom fixed it. The best way was cold meat sandwiches with miracle whip sandwich spread and a glass of milk. Yummo. Several companies with such names as Tongue in Cheek, Tongue Twisters, Tongue Tied and Tongues Will Tell developed entrees such as tips of tongue on a bed of calf brains, roast tongue with sides of ox tail soup and bull lips. Then there is broasted tongue deep fat fried served with a mustard sauce and chitterlings. Tom's Tasty Tongue Trailer served BBQ pierced tongue with a stud of sheep eyeballs. Surprise, surprise these places did not make it in modern America.

Larry grew up north of Calvertville on a farm and graduated from Worthington High School and Indiana State University four times. He can be reached at Goosecrick@aol.com or (317) 839-7656.