Joshua Sur­tees

I can pin­point the ex­act point I knew I had a KFC prob­lem–it was when I found my­self freely cussing the man­ag­er of the Mar­aval branch at quar­ter to mid­night, one rainy night, be­cause she would not pre­pare me some more chick­en.

They tried to make me go to re­hab, but in­stead I came to Lon­don, where the KFC is of a less po­tent qual­i­ty. The with­draw­al process on this side of the At­lantic has proved pain­less and I'm glad of the al­ter­na­tive ther­a­pies, like roast din­ners and full Eng­lish break­fast.

The day I owned up to my prob­lem (I won't say ad­dic­tion, it nev­er reached that lev­el be­cause an in­ter­ven­tion caused me to cap my con­sump­tion at once a month where­as I'd been push­ing for once a week) I had been on a late as­sign­ment and was cruis­ing back to town along the East-West cor­ri­dor with my mind on one thing alone–fried chick­en.

I stopped at two KFCs along the way but was dis­mayed by the un­san­i­tary con­di­tions and lengthy queues and in­stead head­ed West to Mar­aval round­about.

Pulling up to the dri­ve-thru win­dow, I asked for a two-piece snack box with leg and thigh. I had to re­peat the word "thigh" in the lo­cal ver­nac­u­lar–"tie"–since every at­tempt at pro­nounc­ing it in cor­rect Eng­lish through­out my time in Trinidad re­sult­ed in the puz­zled re­sponse, "What it is you want?!"

The Mar­aval KFC em­ploy­ee told me there was no chick­en ex­cept wings. Not even a mea­gre piece ah breast!

De­flat­ed, crushed and some­what baf­fled, I asked, "Is this Ken­tucky Fried Chick­en?"

She con­firmed that it was, so I said, "Good. I'd like some chick­en then, please."

She ste­upsed and gave a world-weary sigh, then went off to con­sult the man­ag­er. Some min­utes lat­er she re­turned to say that I could have wings or noth­ing.

When I asked to speak to the man­ag­er she laughed at me. That was when I snapped. My KFC crav­ings had reached new and ram­pa­geous lev­els, it was no time for fun and games.

I ac­cel­er­at­ed away from the booth with tyres screech­ing, ag­gres­sive­ly swerved the car in­to the near­est va­cant park­ing spot and leapt out, prac­ti­cal­ly break­ing the door down to en­ter the restau­rant.

I en­quired as to why I had been laughed at and why the man­ag­er had thus far failed to ac­knowl­edge my ex­is­tence. More laugh­ter is­sued forth and I could no longer re­strain my­self: the cussing en­sued.

It was to no avail. The man­ag­er ig­nored me and con­tin­ued about her busi­ness. Thank­ful­ly she did not grab a pot of hot oil and dash it at me as hap­pened in a re­cent in­ci­dent in the vicin­i­ty of a KFC out­let, or I could con­ceiv­ably have been Ken­tucky Fried Joshua.

The re­port made me re­flect on the na­tion's ob­ses­sion with KFC. My con­clu­sion is that–hav­ing per­son­al­ly pa­tro­n­ised the Barataria branch, San­ta Cruz branch, Mor­vant junc­tion branch, Char­lotte Street branch, Fred­er­ick Street branch, In­de­pen­dence Square branch, Mar­aval and St James branch­es of KFC–what's con­sis­tent about all of them is that the clien­tele would keep fre­quent­ing them re­gard­less of hav­ing hot oil thrown in their face. Such is the ubiq­ui­ty of the colonel's se­cret recipe with­in Trinida­di­an so­ci­ety, both phys­i­cal­ly and meta­phys­i­cal­ly.

There is lo­cal pride in Roy­al Cas­tle too, of course. Found­ed in 1968 on Fred­er­ick Street and ex­pand­ing in­to a na­tion­wide fran­chise, Roy­al Cas­tle's pep­per sauce is un­be­liev­ably good and it can proud­ly boast at be­ing slight­ly less like­ly to cause obe­si­ty than KFC.

But, asked to choose be­tween the two, I would wa­ger that KFC would win a na­tion­al ref­er­en­dum and there are sta­tis­tics to back this up.

I've been told that out­side of the US, T&T is the fran­chise's high­est gross­ing over­seas mar­ket per capi­ta. And 55 out­lets on two small is­lands tes­ti­fy to the ob­ses­sion.

British KFC just doesn't taste the same, as any Caribbean per­son will tell you. They don't even have spicy for a start, just orig­i­nal. It's bland and soul­less and there's shame at­tached to it. It's some­thing in­dulged in when drunk or bad­ly hun­gover.

My lo­cal branch in Lon­don re­cent­ly closed down to make way for a cof­fee shop (as if we need any more of those.) But I'm guess­ing its de­par­ture won't be mourned like if you took away the one in Scar­bor­ough, To­ba­go–pass­ing by that place you would swear it was the hub of the lo­cal com­mu­ni­ty.

I've heard it de­scribed as the na­tion­al dish of T&T and al­though that is a lit­tle dis­re­spect­ful to the sen­sa­tion­al lo­cal cui­sine, I feel like the Tri­ni di­as­po­ra miss­es KFC more than roti or pelau, which they can make them­selves at home.

A friend re­cent­ly left Trinidad for the last time, mov­ing to New York for good. At Pi­ar­co he was last seen clutch­ing a two-piece and fries to take to his moth­er wait­ing for him at JFK In­ter­na­tion­al.

He daren't reach the States with­out it. There's just one rule his moth­er in­sists up­on when any fam­i­ly mem­ber vis­its: don't walk with your hand swing­ing, walk with a box of chick­en.