The Blindboy Podcast - Pat Graces Famous Fried Chicken

Episode Date: September 8, 2021

A history of how the long lost original Colonel Sanders KFC recipe is now only available in Limerick Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

I see you draped in wet bedsheets, you undressed dentists. Welcome to the Blind Boy Podcast. If you're a new listener, go back to some earlier podcasts. And if you're a regular listener, you know the crack. You know the ritual. So this week's podcast was supposed to be something else. But now it's not something else. Now it's something different.

but now it's not something else. Now it's something different. So I tried to record today's podcast several times today, and I couldn't. I couldn't, because there was a lot of background noise. Now, my general rule with background noise when I'm recording this podcast is

we'd have my squeaky chair every so often. The odd time you might hear a car. But what I can't, what I can't tolerate is any sound that's alarming, you know? Like, jeez, I've got a podcast from about two years ago called Poltergeist of a Builder where my fire alarm started going off and I had to bust it open with a Harley.

It was a fucking saga. I had to bust it open with a Harley. Then I had another podcast that was interrupted by an aggressive cat. A very aggressive cat. My own cat, Silken Thomas,

when I found out he was deaf. So those are sounds I can't allow into this space. If I've got a fire alarm, a screaming cat, these are not relaxing sounds. These are sounds that are designed to induce anxiety. I mean, a smoke alarm, like the particular smoke alarm that interrupted this podcast two years ago, it wasn't even the smoke alarm going off to tell me that there's smoke or a fire. It was the please change my battery alarm, which is much worse because it's judgmental. It's pointing a finger. A smoke alarm is like there's some smoke i'm trying to keep you safe i'm not saying you caused the smoke it's most likely an

accident but can you deal with it please and it's also predictable it's just like beep beep beep beep beep you could actually get used to a smoke alarm you could leave it there and deal with it but the change my battery sound that's doesn't follow a pattern it beeps once every two minutes and let's face it it's judgmental it's basically saying you've neglected to change my battery because you don't care about your safety and you don't care about the safety of other people in the house you lazy cunt that's so we can't have that particular sound in the podcast it would destroy a podcast and then the screaming aggressive cat i'm not going to say that's designed to induce anxiety because cats aren't designed but it certainly is something that

cats have evolved to communicate danger when a cat is aggressively screaming. They're basically going. I'm making myself sound larger and more dangerous than I am. Please leave. So we can't have that over a podcast. Other sounds we can't have in a podcast are. Someone else's house alarm. And car alarms.

So when these noises happen. I just don't record. Simple as that. There's no way around it happen I just don't record simple as that there's no way around it you just can't record so today I didn't have any of those sounds but I did have a lot of police sirens there was fucking

police sirens going off every five fucking minutes so every time I sat down to record a new police siren would happen and I was just like I can't how can I possibly give you a hot take or tell you a story if there's a sound in the background that's designed to alert us so I kept putting it off I kept saying fuck it it'll be grand I'll come back in a half an hour I'll record again. But the police sirens

weren't stopping. They were just one after another. Until it was getting to like 5 o'clock in the evening and I just said there's a lot of police sirens. I better check out what it is. Better check out what it is.

So I went online and it turns out the fucking army were in Limerick in turns out the fucking army were in Limerick in my city the army were in Limerick and they were assisting the police the Gardaí in a major gang sweep so the guards were taking down a criminal gang in Limerick all over the entire city there was 65 separate raids and they needed the army with them in order to do this so there was armed police the army I think there was a helicopter and Limerick's a small, so basically sirens all over the city all day long. And my first reaction was shame and embarrassment. I was embarrassed that, it's like, I can't tell ye that I can't record my podcast

because the fucking army are in Limerick to help the police take down a gang all over the city. I was really embarrassed to say that's the reason I can't record today. And then I said, no, that's ridiculous. The guards needing to raid a gang, a criminal gang, that's not a Limerick specific thing. That happens in Dublin, it happens in Cork, that happens in medium to small sized towns in Ireland. Anywhere where drugs are being sold

you have the guards cracking down on it with raids. That's just what happens. It's not a good thing but it's certainly not limerick specific but in limerick because throughout the years limerick has a very unfair and unrealistic reputation for being an exceptionally violent place or an exceptionally criminal place because this manufactured um reputation exists,

we've internalised the shame of that. So Limerick people, we get embarrassed when there's something like a large-scale raid, even though this happens all over Ireland. And the perception of Limerick is getting way better. It's getting better every year, and I notice it. And there's people, younger people in particular, people in their early 20s, they don't really associate Limerick with this misrepresented version of criminality. People my age and older

definitely kind of still do. You still get people associating Limerick with the term Stab City or thinking that Limerick is overrun with gangs or overrun with shootings and things like that and i do a lot of traveling around the world with my job and i have done for for a decade when i'm doing gigs and stuff and one of the first things i do when i go to a new area is i find out where my hotel is, if I'm in Spain or whatever, and I'll look up TripAdvisor or whatever site, and I'll try and find out what's the area like where my hotel is? What's the area like?

And sometimes you'll get negative reviews of the area. Someone will say, oh, watch out for pickpockets, whatever. And I try and take it with a pinch of salt. But if I was from Spain and I was coming to Limerick, and I was reading the reviews about Limerick, I simply wouldn't come here because they're terrifying.

And none of them are ever... Like, I've seen so many reviews, which is, don't walk around the city after dark. This place is called Stab City. People walk around with knives. And all the really, really scary negative reviews you read about Limerick City, as someone from Limerick reading them, I know that the person has never actually seen or experienced anything

bad about Limerick. But someone has told them something bad about Limerick. And now they're writing about it on TripAdvisor. Limerick just became the area in Ireland that people like to associate with criminality over decades and decades. And just some quick examples to show you the scale of it. Like in 2009, a legitimate newspaper tried to claim that Limerick was the murder capital of Europe, with some quite kind of sketchy rationale to justify it. In the video game Grand Theft Auto V, the biggest video game ever in the world, there's an area, a trailer park, that's called Stab City, named after Limerick. named after Limerick.

Three years ago, Limerick itself had to hire Saatchi advertising agency to try and rebrand the city. And the rebranding slogan was Edge Embrace. So even the city itself had to try and ironically turn the knife thing on its head. Here's a quote from Johnny Depp right when he wrote the foreword to Gerry Conlon's

biography. Gerry Conlon was one of the Guildford Four. Johnny Depp says Gerry decided that we must go to Dingle to see Fungi the dolphin. Very important. Gerry had no need to convince me of course I was going to say yes. Our brief pit stop in Limerick

proved to be one of the most chaotic nights that I can ever remember. Suffice to say we conquered Stab City. That's fucking Johnny Depp. That's Johnny Depp writing about Limerick. And the thing is

I know what Johnny Depp did in Limerick because everyone knows what Johnny Depp did in Limerick. It was like the early 90s he had an unbelievably good night right? He was given free drink. Everyone loved him. And he ended up falling in love with a barmaid and then came back the next night and paid something like 400 Irish pounds for her to get a taxi from where she lived into the pub to see him because he was so mad about her. So he came to Limerickick got free drink and met a woman that he was mad about he had a great time i bet you he didn't see one fucking knife

and i hope it wasn't jerry conlon who told johnny depp that limerick was called stab city because it's like jerry you just spent 15 years in prison because you were from belfast and you fit the description of what the brits think an IRA bomber is. This is international. We're a tiny city. This is international. So that's a lot for a small city of 100,000 people. So the impacts of that bizarre, exaggerated, mythological version of Limerick, the impacts of that are real for people living in limerick so we have a bit of internalized shame and embarrassment around it and also limerick people feel great pressure to continually talk the place up it's almost a cardinal sin in limerick to speak ill of limerick

to an outsider that's how bad it is we have so much because we assume that they're thinking terrible things so we have to big it up and big it up and that can get really really tiring because because limerick has an image problem we therefore have a tourism problem and when you have a tourism problem you have an economic problem there's not enough people coming here to justify a lot of activities being available. For instance Galway is smaller than Limerick. Kilkenny is smaller than Limerick. They have way more restaurants, pubs. They have a lot more things to do because Galway and Kilkenny get a lot of tourism because they have good reputations. So Limerick people are left with this weird catch-22 where

you're speaking to someone who's not from Limerick. You're trying to big up the city. You're trying to say, come to Limerick for a weekend. Come down, it's amazing. And then the person goes, oh really, I've never been to Limerick. List out what I can do in Limerick. And then you're left with this limited

list. There are incredible pubs in Limerick and then you're left with this limited list, there are incredible pubs in Limerick, there are incredible restaurants there are, but you don't have as wide a palette as you would have in a fucking smaller town like Galway or Kilkenny so you're left with the catch 22

so generally what we end up saying when you're from Limerick is oh look just come down it's all about the people. Now that's true, Limerick people are fucking amazing. Because when you come to Limerick and you're not from Limerick, the people from Limerick will go, brilliant, some tourists. We better show them a good time. So everyone will be exceptionally friendly to you and show you a good fucking time. But then the other thing that you generally say to people who aren't from Limerick when you're trying to get them to come here is you go,

look, it's all about the people and then you got to try the gravy in Chicken Hut. And then someone's going, what? You want me to come to your city to eat gravy? And then we're like, yeah, there's a there's a place called chicken hut it's a fried chicken takeaway place and it has the best gravy you're ever going to taste in your entire fucking life and i guarantee you that and people come to limerick and they go to chicken hut and they have the gravy on chips it's chicken chicken gravy. And they go, yeah, that's a unique experience. That's the nicest gravy I've ever had on chips ever.

And Limerick was worth it just for that. Now, I don't want some emails from angry Limerick people saying, Blind boy, you're on your fucking podcast telling people that the only good things about Limerick are people and gravy, you prick. That's not what I'm saying. Look, we've got fucking Munster Rugby. We just won the All-Ireland Final. Pubs, restaurants, the University of Limerick. I could go on for ages talking about good things from Limerick can agree, is our city centre, when compared to smaller fucking places in Ireland,

just simply does not have the footfall and variety. And that's a terrible shame and it's unfair. And what we can agree upon is we tend to always recommend Chicken Hut. Alright? Most people from Limerick, you might list off your favourite pubs, that can all differ,

but I'd say 80% of people are going to say to an outsider, come to Limerick, go to that pub, go to that pub, and you have to get the chicken gravy in Chicken Hut, and the fried chicken. So this week's podcast, it was going to be about something else, but then all those sirens happened and I started thinking about Chicken Hut

so I want to tell the story of why does Limerick possibly have the best fried chicken that you've ever tasted what the fuck is that about and is there an answer and I went on a fucking deep dive and fuck me did I find an answer.

And it's quite a hot take. And you know from listening to this podcast. I'm not going to tell you a story. Unless I've put in research. And found a pretty interesting story. So I have. So firstly. Like what is Chicken Hut?

It's just a tiny little takeaway in Limerick City on O'Connell Street. It's not particularly impressive to look at. It really isn't. It's not particularly impressive to sit down in. You would just walk past it. No offence to Chicken Hut, but if you didn't know what Chicken Hut was, you'd just walk past it. looks like a takeaway the chicken is just perfectly fluffy with this incredibly tasty seasoning the speciality item on the menu is the gravy that it's just it's chicken gravy very thick

chicken gravy that you usually have on chips. It's called a super chip. Another very famous item is the snack box, which is just a couple of pieces of chicken breast, chicken leg, and some chips. Kind of a limited menu, but everything on the menu is perfect. The official tagline of Chicken Hut is, the fork's in the bag, you gaul. Which is just beautiful.

Now it used to be an unofficial tagline because some lad went in there years ago and bought his gravy chip or super chip as it's known and said is there no fork in the bag? And the woman behind the counter just roared forks in the bag you gole and it stuck. forks in the bag you goal and it's stuck and now chicken hut sell merchandise that says the forks in the bag you goal which is just beautifully limerick it just sums up everything it's so beautifully poetic on the surface it seems aggressive but it's not limerick people will defend chicken hut to the end end here's a true story I know this for a fact because I know people who were there so

there used to be this band called Ndubs, remember Ndubs and who was in Ndubs Talicia, remember Talicia and Dappy Dappy Dappy was this

English rapper who used to wear a hat a bit like a condom that wasn't on properly Dappy was gigging in Limerick right, he was doing like a nightclub appearance, so when Dappy came to Limerick

he had demanded KFC on his rider. He was like, I'm not going on stage unless there's KFC in the rider. Now at this time, there was no, there certainly wasn't any KFCs in Limerick. I think the closest one might have been Dublin or Belfast. So when Dappy was gigging or making this appearance in a Limerick nightclub, they couldn't give him KFC. But then the nightclub said, Don't worry Dappy, you're in Limerick City.

We've got the best fucking fried chicken in the world. We're going to bring you some chicken hut. So they brought Dappy a big platter of chicken hut bags. And he wouldn't eat it. He wouldn't eat it and he started talking shit about the chicken hut stuff saying I wanted fucking KFC what's this shit? One of the

bouncers overheard it and had to be pulled away from attacking Dappy because he disrespected chicken hut that's how much Limerick people respect and adore chicken hut that really happened that genuinely happened so so one little strange anomaly about chicken hut in limerick is if you say to an older limerick person if i go to my mother and i say to my mother

do you want me to get something in chicken hut she She won't call it Chicken Hut, she calls it Kentucky. So older Limerick people refer to Chicken Hut as Kentucky. Which is odd because KFC that I mentioned earlier is Kentucky Fried Chicken. So why do older people in Limerick refer to the Chicken Hut as Kentucky? So this is where things get a little bit mad. So let's take it to America. America in the early 20th century and a fellow by the name of Harland Sanders.

Now, Harland was born in 1890 and he became obsessed with perfecting a recipe for fried chicken. He's one of these people that his life kind of encapsulated the narrative of what we'd call the American dream. He's someone who consistently made mistakes and fuck-ups. And kept kind of getting up from them. Continually going towards success. When he was a teenager he lied about his age and enlisted in the US Army. Then he didn't like that.

Then he worked on the railways. He made a bollocks of that. Then he became a fireman. Managed to make a bollocks of that. By the 1920s, he decided he wanted to be a lawyer. So he trained and practiced as a lawyer. And then ended his own career. After he got into a fist fight with his own client in

court. So then eventually around 1930 the Great Depression hits and he finds himself running a petrol station in Kentucky and while Sanders is running this petrol station it's the Great Depression

so there's not a lot of people even with cars there's not a lot of money this is an extreme economic crisis so he has to start getting clever i can't just sell petrol i have to start doing something else so while he's running this petrol station in kentucky he starts preparing food as well just having a couple of table chairs around the around the petrol station and serving some simple food and it's around this time he starts to get obsessive about perfecting fried chicken so he starts making pan fried chicken and this here is the birth of you guessed it kfc kentucky fried chicken this man was harland sand, Colonel Sanders of Kentucky Fried Chicken.

Now I always thought Colonel Sanders wasn't real. I thought he was just a mascot. When I would see KFC advertising I'd see a cartoon of this old man with a white beard and a little moustache and a white suit. He was a real person. He was a real human being called Harlan Sanders. And he began KFC in a petrol station in Kentucky. But he was also clearly an aggressively unhinged individual. Like I said, 10 years previously, he had to stop being a liar because he got into a fist fight with his own client in court. And then while he was running this petrol station, he ended up shooting his nearest competitor. His nearest competitor was running this petrol station he ended up shooting his nearest competitor. His nearest competitor was running a petrol station down the road. The competitor got jealous because it's like

you're cheating, you're selling chicken as well as petrol. Huge big argument. Guns were pulled out. There was a shootout. People were killed. And this is KFC Colonel Sanders. Now did Sanders go to jail for shooting a competitor? No he didn't.

This was Kentucky in the 1930s in the south, southern states of America. The state of Kentucky made him an honorary colonel because his petrol station was doing so well and his fried chicken was so nice. But what's important to note here is that Colonel Sanders was pan frying the chicken. So he'd have a frying pan with some oil in it and he was getting his chicken and he was perfecting his recipe. He was perfecting the perfect blend of herbs and spices to make this delicious chicken. But because it was pan fried, it was taking a long time to make, which limited the amount of customers

that he could actually serve because it takes time to pan fry the chicken breast. Now, just a little note on fried chicken. Like, did Colonel Sanders invent fried chicken? No, he didn't. Fried chicken is most likely, it's a mixture of Scottish it definitely comes from the southern states of America

the process of deep frying most likely came from Scottish people but the spices the practice of spicing and flouring the chicken before you fry it that came from West Africa so it appears to be an amalgamation of Scottish immigrants and

African American people who were born into slavery. That's where fried chicken, southern fried chicken comes from. But Colonel Sanders is considered the person who brought this to the world. And the innovation that Colonel Sanders did that changed

fried chicken the world over is he left his petrol station and then he bought himself a motel. This was in North Carolina and the motel had 140 seats. So Colonel Sanders was left with this fucking conundrum of alright I've got this amazing pan fried chicken that I'm doing this Kentucky fried chicken as I call it but it takes a long time to fry these chickens in a frying pan

and I've got 140 people and if all 140 people want my chicken which they do I better figure out a way to very quickly cook these people perfect fried chicken first off he perfected what he called his secret recipe. The famous KFC secret recipe of 11 herbs and spices. Salt, thyme, basil, celery salt, black

pepper, paprika, the whole shebang. He had perfected incredibly tasty chicken batter but he still had the problem of what good is this tasty chicken if I'm pan frying it and I can't serve all 140 people quick enough what good is this so he goes fuck it I'm gonna start deep frying it I'm gonna get my chicken and I'm gonna deep fry it and then I'm gonna serve it to people but the problem he found with deep frying, it was still a little bit too slow. It was half the time of pan frying, but the chicken that he was making when he was deep frying it, it was dry, he wasn't getting consistency,

it wasn't evenly done, he wasn't happy with it. And then in 1939, he started seeing pressure cookers. Pressure cookers were a new technology and he goes fuck it what if we use a pressure cooker but there's oil inside in it and that's when he hit on it he was able to produce

absolutely perfect crispy fried chicken in under 10 minutes using the pressure cooker method with his perfect 11 herbs and spices that's what colonel sanders did he took fried chicken which is something that is a laborious food stuff that takes a long time to make and he'd figured out a method where he can do it in under 10 minutes he'd now made fried chicken fast food and that's what Colonel Sanders did. So by the 1950s he had invented the brand Kentucky Fried

Chicken he'd started to franchise his method of the 11 secret herbs and spices and also how to cook it and he franchised it out so now by the 50s in America, multiple Kentucky Fried Chicken restaurants start to pop up. So now, Southern Fried Chicken is a fast food that's growing all over America and people fucking love it. But here's the thing with Colonel Sanders that really sets him apart. Of course, he loved money. Alright, he's a businessman, he set up a franchise. But he genuinely cared about the quality of the food that he was making he genuinely cared about his secret recipe

and his secret method and any franchise that took his method he made fucking sure that their chicken was as good as he wanted it to be he really cared about this by the early 1960s he had 600 locations all around

America but he was getting old. He was getting really old. He was in his 70s and he just simply wasn't able for it. He wasn't able to manage all these restaurants so he sold Kentucky Fried Chicken to an investor by the name of Jack Massey. Now Jack Massey was a businessman. He was a venture capitalist. He cared about profits. He didn't necessarily care about tasty chicken. And this is the person that the colonel has now handed Kentucky Fried Chicken, KFC, over to.

Now the colonel didn't completely leave KFC. He stayed on as a brand ambassador, which means that his image, you know, the Colonel that we know in the white suit with the moustache and all of that and the white hair, he stayed on as a brand ambassador and he also maintained franchise rights outside of the US. So he started a few franchises up in Canada, a smaller amount, and he oversaw the Canadian franchise for the 60s but big problems started to emerge so you've got the colonel who's genuinely obsessed with perfect fried chicken and then you've got this Massey fella who bought KFC who doesn't give a fuck

about fried chicken he gives a fuck about profits and what Sanders started to see happen is that KFC in America was all about the dollars and they started to change his original recipe and Sanders started to fucking hate the chicken that KFC was making he felt that they cut corners with money they changed the ingredients and they

started to make this really bland shit fried chicken and Sanders hated that. But meanwhile he was up in Canada and the franchises that he was overseeing in Canada he was making sure that they stuck to his original recipe chicken, the original best KFC recipe. So the Colonel is up there in Canada making this incredible amazing fried chicken. Completely different to the KFC that's happening down in America. And there's an Irish fella

living in Toronto by the name of Pat Grace. And Pat Grace is from Neenah which is in Tipperary just outside Limerick. So Pat Grace is from Nina, which is in Tipperary, just outside Limerick. So Pat Grace is living in Toronto. And while he's there, he's like, fuck me, these chicken restaurants that we have here in Toronto. I've never tasted anything like this before in my fucking life.

This is incredible. So Pat Grace from Tipperary becomes obsessed with KFC. And then he starts to learn about the Colonel. And he's like, I want to meet the fucking Colonel. I want to meet this Colonel, this old man who makes the best chicken

I've ever tasted in my life. So what does Pat do? Pat goes, I have to meet this cunt. I have to meet the Colonel. So he does some inquiring and he finds out that the Colonel's got a holiday home near Toronto. And Pat just kind of cold calls him. He goes out there and he goes, I'm going to fucking meet the Colonel. And he does.

So Pat Grace from Tipperary meets Colonel Sanders, who must be nearly in his 80s at this point. And they immediately hit it off. They just have great crack. And Pat Grace says to the Colonel, I love your fried chicken. I reckon I can sell this in Ireland. And the Colonel says to Pat Grace, You've never opened a chicken restaurant in your life,

but I like the cut of your jib. Fuck it. Head back to Ireland. I'm going to give you my original recipe, the real recipe, and go and open some KFCs. All right? You can do that. I've got permission. And Pat Grace says, fuck it, yeah, I'm going to do that. I'm going to open some fucking KFCs in Ireland and they're going to be your original recipe.

So he does. KFC's in Ireland and they're going to be your original recipe. So he does. The first ever American fast food franchise to open up in Ireland was KFC. And this fella Pat Grace, who just chanced his arm and met the Colonel, and the Colonel was a mad bastard and said, fuck it, go on. Pat Grace comes back to Ireland. He opens up a KFC. He opens one up in Crumlin, one in Fibsborough,

and then he opens his main one on O'Connell Street in Limerick. That was 1970. Today that very building is the Chicken Hut. 51 years later. And that's not even the hottest take here. That's not even the... I haven't even gotten

hot yet. Alright? That's just the start. I'm gonna get hot after the Ocarina Pause. So here's the Ocarina Pause. You might hear an algorithmically generated advert. Fucking KFC. Might very well advertise. Who knows?

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out what I want to put out, a bit like fucking Colonel Sanders and his initial petrol station chicken. He's there making this chicken with his special recipe. He enjoys making it. He cares deeply about that the people who are consuming it are getting a quality product that he can stand over. But then the big brands, big money steps in, makes a big bollocks of it, and he's no longer making the chicken he wants to make. He's making chicken that the brands want to make so that they can save money. Podcasting's a bit like that.

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instagram blind by boat club catch me on twitch twitch.tv forward slash the blind by podcast dog bless so back to limerick it's the 1970s and pat grace is running Kentucky Fried Chicken in Limerick and he is following to a T the exact recipe that Colonel Sanders himself gave Pat Grace because Pat Grace has a lot of respect for Colonel Sanders for believing in him and taking a risk and giving him the opportunity. Pat Grace and the Colonel became very close friends. They started to travel back and forth from Ireland and America, hanging out with each other. But while this is happening, Colonel Sanders back in Canada is becoming more and more critical of KFC, in particular the American KFC. Now he's becoming openly critical of the restaurant that

he founded. Here's a public critique that Colonel Sanders offered in a newspaper in the late 1970s about American KFC. He says, my God, that gravy is horrible. They buy tap water for 15 to 20 cents, a thousand gallons, and they mix it with flour and starch and end up with pure wallpaper paste. And I know wallpaper paste, by God, because I've seen my mother make it. There's no nutrition in it and they are not to be allowed to sell it. Crispy recipe is nothing in the world but a damn fried dough ball stuck on some chicken. So Colonel Sanders, he fucking hates what KFC has become. He hates what they've done with his recipe.

He specifically hates what they've done with his chicken gravy. And interestingly, Pat Grace back in Limerick specifically is religiously following Colonel Sanders' chicken gravy recipe. The real deal Colonel Sanders' chicken is being cooked in Limerick in the 1970s. Now what becomes even stranger is this all somehow gets tied in with the origins of professional football in Ireland. the origins of professional football in Ireland. I found this strange little BBC report from I think 1972 or 1973. In Limerick, as in the rest of the Irish Republic, soccer isn't the obsessional sport it is in parts of Britain.

In fact, Limerick didn't have a proper soccer team until just before the war. It was and is called Limerick United. Two or three seasons ago, they started to do rather well in the KFCLI. The initials, believe it or not, stand for the Kentucky Fried Chicken League of Ireland. The reason for the slightly eccentric title is this, Matt. Pat Grace has gone from being a not-too-successful horse trader and door-to-door salesman to being a millionaire twice over. He always promised himself that when he'd made it he'd have a big car, a house by the water, and his own full-size snooker table. Things started to go right for Pat Grace when he met the legendary Colonel Sanders and was converted to the taste and the profit margin of the finger-licking good poultry. Just lately there's been a bit of a legal dust-up over the ingredients you're supposed

to use in the batter that covers Kentucky Fried Chicken. Pat Grace lost the tussle in the High Court and was obliged to change the names on his shops and the Football League sponsorship. So the Irish competition now labours under the name of Pat Grace's famous Fried Chicken League of Ireland, which doesn't actually trip off the tongue. So that there is a BBC report from like 1981 or 82. It's a video report. If you go to BBC archives, you can actually see it.

If you type in Kentucky Fried Chicken League of Ireland. And it was like a British fluff piece that kind of, it's a little bit Father Ted. It was kind of laughing at Irish people for being so ridiculous as to name our football league after Kentucky Fried Chicken. But the League of Ireland, which is now, I know fuck all about sports so apologies but the League of Ireland

which is now a professional league of soccer started off as Kentucky Fried Chicken because Pat Grace put money into it but the bit of that report that I'm interested in there is the narrator mentioned there was a legal fight so what happened was Pat Grace was loyal to the Colonel

the Colonel was there in Canada with his Canadian franchises the Colonel was all about the Colonel's original fucking recipe and Pat Grace was loyal to the Colonel but KFC had become this big American corporation Colonel's original fucking recipe. And Pat Grace was loyal to the Colonel. But KFC had become this big American corporation and they were trying to fuck with Pat Grace. They were trying to say to Pat Grace,

stop making the Colonel's chicken. This is affecting profit margins. Make the Kentucky Fried Chicken that we want to make. Make our Kentucky Fried Chicken. And Pat Grace was just like, no fucking way. I'm loyal to the Colonel and I'm making the best chicken. You can go fuck yourselves with your shit American chicken. So he loses the right to use the KFC name or the Kentucky Fried Chicken name.

He now has Pat Grace's famous fried chicken. But he's kept the recipe. It's actually the real KFC. He's kept the Colonel's original recipe. And KFC are off making shit of their fucking chicken. Trying to cut corners and save money. That English bit of audio that I played for you there from the BBC. Which was a video. I learned that that actually never even went out on TV

it was recorded in 1981-82 they never put it out on TV for a really shitty reason there was the week that it was due to go out on TV there was an IRA bomb so the Brits

in an act of anti-Irish racism, that's anti-Irish racism, decide, oh, the IRA have planted a bomb in London, therefore it would be offensive for us to air anything that's filmed in Ireland because we equate Irish people playing soccer and selling fried chicken. We equate that equally with the IRA planting bombs. So that was a shame that never went out. So it is available on the BBC Archive website.

Now, how do I know this? Because I got in contact with Pat Grace's son, Carl, and I had a chat with him, and I asked him some questions. So the central thesis of this podcast episode is, I started off speaking about Chicken Hut in Limerick, and saying that people in Limerick will say with utter confidence, come into Chicken Hut,

and you're going to taste the best fucking fried chicken you've ever tasted in your life. And people in Limerick will say this specifically about the chicken gravy and what I find fascinating is it's now no longer just opinion that's not opinion now

because when someone says come on the best chicken the best chicken you've ever tasted and you can say well actually this is pretty close to fucking colonel sanders's actual original recipe and he is the person who invented what we call modern fried chicken so there's that's how i back up my argument about Limerick having the best fried chicken right there. Because Kentucky Fried Chicken became Pat Grace's famous fried chicken, which was then sold and became the Chicken Hut, which we have there today.

And the Chicken Hut was not owned by Pat Grace, but it took Pat Grace's recipe, which was the Colonel's original recipe, and it turned the colours up a bit. So that's what the Chicken Hut Limerick recipe is. It's the Colonel's original recipe with the volume turned up a little bit. It's a more intense version. Now, honourable mention to Hillbilly's down in Cork. Hillbilly's is a chicken restaurant down in Cork, which I believe is run by one of Pat Grace's nephews. But Hillbillies gets its blend from Chicken Hut. All right, so Cork doesn't have that on us.

Cork, you're cooking limerick chicken. All right? And I don't know if you've ever tasted KFC recently, but KFC isn't nice. It's overly salted, very obvious nice. It's overly salted. Very obvious chicken. It's nice for the crunch factor every so often. But.

Their gravy is terrible. Like. Chicken nut kicks the absolute shit out of KFC. And now we know why. So. This doesn't end there. So I was talking to Carl Grace, who is Pat Grace's son. Pat Grace passed in 2009.

And Carol Grace runs a company called gracesperfectblend.com. Now, Grace's Perfect Blend is a very small company that supply fast food restaurants in Ireland and the UK with Grace's perfect blend which is Pat Grace's son making a fried chicken blend that he sells the takeaways okay and he sells it in bulk and this is most likely the actual Colonel's recipe the actual Colonel's recipe this is most likely the actual Colonel's recipe. The actual Colonel's recipe. This is most likely it. And it's in fucking limerick. Now, I'm not the first person online to draw attention to this Pat Grace Colonel Sanders connection.

There's a huge community online, particularly on YouTube, where chefs with YouTube channels reverse engineer fast food. So you'll have someone trying to make a Big Mac at home perfectly. So there's this huge Canadian YouTuber called Glenn and Friends. And Glenn was like, I grew up in Canada and I remember KFC being amazing and then it got shit. So he went on the search for the Colonel's original recipe. And he did it over the course of about six videos until he eventually found the Pat Grace connection. And Glenn and friends basically told his millions of followers,

Limerick. The original Colonel recipe, you get it in Limerick, and you get it from Grace's Perfect Blend. This is the real deal. So Carl Grace, who has this small little company where the blend is, it's made in a warehouse in Anacati in Limerick, has been getting orders from all around the world the past year.

People down in New Zealand, like it's, it's like, I think it's about 40 quid for a 5kg bag of this chicken blend. He said there's people in New Zealand paying 200 quid on postage and packaging alone just to get their hands on the original what they see is the original carnal's recipe which is coming out of limerick and what I find really fascinating about this is it's how we fetishize the authentic as a culture in particular millennials all right millennials people. People over the age of 27. People my age.

We fetishize. And seek out what we consider to be authentic. In the face of. Corporate homogeneity. Like KFC is a giant huge corporation. Right. And their chicken isn't very nice. But when you find out that it was founded by

this eccentric wizard-like character who wanted the perfect fried chicken, and when you hear that, oh, it used to be amazing, but the recipe is lost, it's gone forever, blown in the winds of time, and then someone says to you, the recipe survived. It survived in a tiny little town

known as Stab City in Ireland and it's being made in a warehouse in Anacotti then you're going to have someone from New Zealand saying yeah I'll spend fucking 300 quid on that I'll fucking

I'll spend 300 quid on post and packaging just to possibly get the authenticity of the Colonel's original recipe which I find fucking fascinating and now Carl Grace who has this tiny little website he now is being hounded

by international chicken hipsters just screaming at him take my fucking money I don't care what the postage and packaging is I need the colonel's original recipe I need this authenticity it's the only thing that gives me meaning in this life where everything is a wash

with corporate sameness I need the original wizard chicken recipe so I that's my hot take and I thoroughly enjoyed finding this shit out just the fact that people in Limerick for so long

have just been saying we've got the best fried chicken in Limerick and now if someone argues with you you can make a really strong case to actually say, no, this is not just subjectively the best fried chicken in the world, but it may objectively

be the best fried chicken in the world because it's the original recipe from the person who modernised what we now call fried chicken. So fuck off back to Cork. So there you go. And thank you to Carl Grace for giving me some information. And if you want, if graceisperfectblend.com,

if you want to order yourself a 5kg bag of fried chicken batter if that's what you want to do if you order it in Ireland you'll get it at cost price there'll be no extortionate packaging fees because it's from Limerick and if you're one of my listeners

from America and you're a big giant hipster who wants to fetishize the original Colonel's recipe then you can order it but you'll expect to pay huge amounts of import duties dog bless I'll talk to you next week Rock City, you're the best fans in the league, bar none. Tickets are on sale now for Fan Appreciation Night on Saturday, April 13th when the Toronto Rock hosts the Rochester Nighthawks at First Ontario Centre

in Hamilton at 7.30pm. You can also lock in your playoff pack right now to guarantee the same seats for every postseason game and you'll only pay as we play. Come along for the ride and punch your ticket to Rock City at torontorock.com. you