Great Fried Chicken (though not made by me!)

Since I'm off from school this week, I thought I'd still provide you with some food-related reading. I initially planned to post about this on Atlanta Magazine's blog, Covered Dish, to which I contribute weekly. However, after talking it over with my editor there, I realized that people here in Atlanta (especially the foodie community) are already intimately familiar with the Watershed's excellent fried chicken. Plus, a close-up of it appeared on the magazine's cover just a few months ago. So I figured I'd share my first Tuesday fried chicken experience with you instead.

The other day, one of my favorite food blogs, the Amateur Gourmet (a.k.a. former Atlantan Adam Roberts) alerted me to a wonderful 20-minute documentary on Southern cuisine maven Edna Lewis. You can watch “Fried Chicken & Sweet Potato Pie” here on Gourmet’s website and I don’t know how I missed it until now—the posting date is January ’08. It’s narrated in the soothing voice of the “Grande Dame of Southern Cooking” herself, collected from past interviews (Lewis passed away in 2006). Watershed chef Scott Peacock also provides commentary and insight into the remarkable life of his close friend and culinary inspiration.

Every Tuesday night at Watershed, Peacock is still cooking the fried chicken recipe that he and “Miss Lewis” perfected together. I’ve been dying to try it ever since I moved here, but Zack and I are generally late-dinner people and always seem to make it over to Decatur just in time to learn that the kitchen is out of chicken. We reluctantly order something else from the (still very good) menu, drooling as heaping plates of fried chicken and biscuits arrive at the tables of those who arrived earlier.

After discovering “Fried Chicken & Sweet Potato Pie”, I was determined to get to the Watershed early this Tuesday. We didn’t have a reservation but showed up before seven and scored a table for two in the packed restaurant without too long a wait. “Two chickens?” asked our server before even handing us the menus. “Yep!” we replied gleefully.

It did not disappoint. True, I’m from up North, but I’ve never had fried chicken like this before: the flavorful crust is dark-brown, not golden, and the meat beneath tender and juicy, even the breast. It came on a homey plate piled with mashed potatoes, green beans, and two of Peacock’s justifiably famous biscuits ($19). There was no sweet potato pie on the dessert menu last night (we were way too stuffed to have dessert anyway), but still, Miss Lewis would surely be proud of her protégé.
Watershed, 406 West Ponce De Leon Ave., Decatur; 404-378-4900; watershedrestaurant.com