Flocking Together and Chickening Out

Chicken is chicken, right? Well, not always, it appears. A new catalogue of chicken-based products available from Pierce Foods--a leading supplier of pre-cooked menu items to the food service industry--offers well over 200 variations on the theme. There’s Hume Dingher’s 39 Seasonings Fast-Fry chicken, for instance (“Leave it to Hume to pack 39 herbs and spices, sea salts, and vegetables into one chicken recipe”). Or Greek Odyssey Chicken Breast Fillets (“IT’S MICROWAVEABLE!”). Or Marinata Americana Chicken Thigh Fillets (“Here is a chicken fillet with a touch of greatness-- a lighter blend of those Central and Southern European spices America loves best”).

Other varieties of Pierce poulet include Marinata/LS (Low Sodium) Curried Brest (sic), Microwaveable Wing-Dings, Roman-Fingers, Dip’n Chik’n Nuggets, Taste O’Mesquite Whole Halves (sic), Chik-Nachos and both Whirligigs and Whirlibirds (the latter, of course, being “Fully cooked, breaded chicken breast-and-thigh meat patties . . . seasoned with sage and onion croutons”).

It’s nice to know that somebody like Pierce is out there making the restaurateur’s life easier, isn’t it?

READ MY LICKS: What will (gulp) President Bush and Vice-President Quayle be eating on the evening of Inauguration Day? Hearts-of-palm blossoms, asiago-garlic bread and pheasant pizza, among other things. They’ll be sampling these and other exotic delicacies at a reception in a new restaurant in the nation’s capital called Adirondacks. Adirondacks, which is the work of L.A.’s own Michael McCarty (of Michael’s in Santa Monica) and chef Jimmy Schmidt--who also own the Rattlesnake Clubs in Denver and Detroit-- is an appropriate site for a presidential reception, as it happens, since it occupies the old presidential suite at Washington’s Union Station, built for the use of Teddy Roosevelt. (Adirondacks was originally going to be yet another Rattlesnake Club, incidentally, but McCarty and Schmidt felt that an East-coast sort of name would be more appropriate. Personally, I think the Rattlesnake Club is a great name for a restaurant a few blocks from Capitol Hill.)

“We’re just going to serve wild hors d’oeuvres,” says Schmidt. “You know those politician types. They like to stay on their feet and pump a lot of hands. They’ll probably be so busy talking that they’ll only take little bites of things--so I’ve got to get my licks in quick.”

Among those licks will be spicy shrimp with achiote and picaya (hearts-of-palm blossoms) on lemon-bread croutons, asiago -garlic bread with black and green olive tapenade , and that pheasant pizza with the addition of Chinese-style plum sauce, hot mustard and mozzarella.

Hey, wait a minute. Isn’t Bush the guy who made fun of Michael Dukakis for talking about Belgian endive?

SALT AND PEPPER: Cafe Prego is new on La Cienega, on the site of the former L’Angolo (among other restaurants). . . . Marc Ehrler, former chef for the French ambassador in Washington, is the new executive chef at the San Ysidro Ranch in Montecito. Ehrler replaces Bryan Carr, who has moved to the El Encanto Hotel in Santa Barbara. . . .