Are chicken feet the next chicken wing?

I knew a little about chicken feet before we moved here. I had first seen them when I still lived in Vermont; a coworker traveled regularly to China for business and once he brought back a vacuum-sealed package of chicken feet. They were in a red sauce but I could still see the toenails and wrinkles. I thought, “how did he find those? Do people really eat them?” I never tried them but I was curious and skeptical.

Time will answer all questions

Fast forward six years and here I am, living in the very city my old coworker still flies into. My questions have been answered! As it turns out, he found those chicken feet EVERYWHERE. I had considered them rare, like maybe he had to really search for a place that sells them because they’re so odd. This is not the case as they are literally everywhere. They are in vacuum-sealed packages in convenience stores, like beef jerky in our gas stations. I saw them in chafing dishes and big pots in restaurants. They are steamed, fried, boiled, sauced and skewered. I haven’t found a restaurant that doesn’t serve them yet.

And yes, people really eat them. They pick them up with their chopsticks and gnaw away. They pick them up in their hands (with plastic gloves on for hygienic reasons) and shove them almost entirely in their mouths, pulling them out the way some people eat chicken wings in the states and stripping what little meat there is from the bone and tendon. And that made me wonder…

Are these things the next tailgate munchie?

Americans didn’t always eat chicken wings. There’s debate about who originally introduced them to mainstream menus, but I like to give credit to the Anchor Bar in Buffalo, NY, in the early 1960s. Before then, chicken wings were primarily used in soup or thrown out. They were considered scraps because they don’t have a lot of meat on them. Their meat:work ratio  was apparently unsatisfactory, until the Anchor Bar fried some up and literally gave them away to their patrons to try.  Wings grew in popularity after a few weeks and now they’re everywhere in America. And they’re delicious, as long as you know where the bones are and how to maneuver around the tendons.

Not this time!

Our friend and recruiter, Jay, met us and took us to a barbecue chain called Cabin
BBQ, or MuWu ShaoKao. Much of the meat on the menu is cooked and served on skewers. Since I want to try as many new foods as I can, I ordered the chicken feet. I had no plan, no strategy for getting the meat off the bones. Feeling pretty confident I was alone on this culinary adventure, I reached for the plate of three feet on sticks when it came and put it beside my plate. 

They looked like greasy, seasoned chicken feet. There were wrinkles, there were spices and there were toenails! I had heard that some people spit out the toenails. I tried to summon up the courage but I couldn’t bear to stick a toe entirely in my mouth. Instead, I nibbled a little skin off the top of the foot. The verdict? The spicy sauce overpowered any taste. It wasn’t crunchy like a wing would be, although I didn’t eat any of the meat. This may require another attempt. An attempt involving alcohol.