Bryan's Food Shack
Chicken Wings: Hyde Park Vs Evanston
Bryan Chang
Issue date: 3/3/05 Section: Admit Weekend
Competition is this week's theme because it's Admit Weekend, and theoretically there are swarms of admits crawling around campus the next few days that we are fighting our friends at Wharton and Kellogg tooth and nail for. To those of you visiting our fine institution, I ask: What are your decision-making criteria in choosing where to get your MBA? What are your priorities? Yes, you may have already thought about quality of faculty, how beneficial LEAD will be for you, how you'll get concentrations in finance and entrepreneurship, blah, blah, blah. But have you asked yourself where you're going to get your chicken wings? That would seem to be an important question, if not the essential question. So, how do we measure up? Well, let's have a competition: Hyde Park v. Evanston. GSB v. Kellogg.
Enter the gladiators. If you've ever spent more than 10 minutes with anyone who's attended Northwestern, its inevitable conversation will shift to Buffalo Joe's. Those Evanstonians love their Buffalo Joe's, brought to their fair suburb by Mr. Joe Prudden of Buff. . . ah heck, you know where he's from. Buffalo Joe's fans love that the wings are double-fried for extra crispiness and celebrate the option of buffalo sauce in mild, spicy and suicide styles.
Now, if you've ever spent more than 10 minutes with me, its inevitable conversation will shift to Harold's Chicken Shack. Heck, Dinesh Kalwani named this column after it. And you know what? I'll put Harold's Chicken up against any fru-fru "I'm from Buffalo, NY" chicken wing place any day. If Iron Chef hadn't already jumped the shark-as if that phrase didn't jump its own shark two years ago-Harold Pierce would be my Iron Chef Fried Chicken. Harold's Food Shack is my Nitro from American Gladiators. I roll him out when I need to tug a guy off the climbing wall.
Before we start, let me acknowledge awareness of my bias. Not only am I rooting for my friendly neighborhood chicken shack, I not-so-secretly want the GSB to come out on top with this one as well. I briefly considered bringing in an outside expert for this review-maybe even a friend dressed in purple-to reduce the possibility of confirmation bias, but instead chose a different solution, one that might give admitted students more of a flavor of the GSB's quantitative approach.
Enter the gladiators. If you've ever spent more than 10 minutes with anyone who's attended Northwestern, its inevitable conversation will shift to Buffalo Joe's. Those Evanstonians love their Buffalo Joe's, brought to their fair suburb by Mr. Joe Prudden of Buff. . . ah heck, you know where he's from. Buffalo Joe's fans love that the wings are double-fried for extra crispiness and celebrate the option of buffalo sauce in mild, spicy and suicide styles.
Now, if you've ever spent more than 10 minutes with me, its inevitable conversation will shift to Harold's Chicken Shack. Heck, Dinesh Kalwani named this column after it. And you know what? I'll put Harold's Chicken up against any fru-fru "I'm from Buffalo, NY" chicken wing place any day. If Iron Chef hadn't already jumped the shark-as if that phrase didn't jump its own shark two years ago-Harold Pierce would be my Iron Chef Fried Chicken. Harold's Food Shack is my Nitro from American Gladiators. I roll him out when I need to tug a guy off the climbing wall.
Before we start, let me acknowledge awareness of my bias. Not only am I rooting for my friendly neighborhood chicken shack, I not-so-secretly want the GSB to come out on top with this one as well. I briefly considered bringing in an outside expert for this review-maybe even a friend dressed in purple-to reduce the possibility of confirmation bias, but instead chose a different solution, one that might give admitted students more of a flavor of the GSB's quantitative approach.