When: July 30
National Chicken and Waffles Day on July 30th celebrates one of America's most unexpected and satisfying food combinations. The pairing of fried chicken and waffles is older than most people realize and has two distinct American origin stories — a 17th-century Pennsylvania tradition and a 20th-century Harlem food culture classic — that coexist without either canceling the other.
Chicken and waffles has two completely separate origin stories that converged — one from the Pennsylvania Dutch in the 1600s, and one from Harlem jazz clubs in the 1930s — and both are legitimate.
The first chicken and waffles tradition in America was savory and had nothing to do with syrup. Pennsylvania Dutch settlers in the 17th and 18th centuries served stewed chicken and gravy over waffles — the waffle as a platform for absorbing sauce, the chicken as braised protein. It was a dinner dish that used the waffle the way a European cook would use a dumpling or a thick slice of bread. No sweetness, no fried crust, no timing paradox. Just a practical use of two things they had. The version that most people mean when they say "chicken and waffles" came from Harlem. Wells Supper Club on 133rd Street served jazz musicians in the 1930s who finished their sets at 2 or 3 in the morning — too late for dinner, too early for breakfast, hungry enough to need a real meal. The solution was to put fried chicken (dinner) on a waffle with maple syrup (breakfast) and serve the whole thing as a 3am meal that didn't require any commitment to time of day. It was practical improvisation. The...