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Different Flavors

You know how people in other parts of the world eat far different things? For example, I dare you to find beef anywhere on McDonald's menu in India. The same holds true for different regions or parts of the same country for a large enough country. A coastal region is going to have far more seafood in its repertoire than a land-locked one, and different cultural influences are going to affect the seasoning that the people use. I don't think any of this is particularly surprising for any of you, but just keep all of that in mind for what comes next.

I was in Hawaii fairly recently, and my friend and I were looking for a place to eat dinner. We knew exactly where we wanted to go (said travel buddy had been wise enough to look it up ahead of time), but we had a few hours to kill so we had decided to walk around. We didn't really have anywhere to be, so it made sense to take a leisurely stroll. Heck, we found a night-time open-air market, so I'd like to think it was a wise decision. As we were walking back towards dinner, though, we happened to spot a Kentucky Fried Chicken.

Given the first paragraph, I wondered aloud if they had slightly different flavors than what I was used to back home. Yes, I was still in the same country. Still, I figured I was on an island, and it wouldn't be unheard of to have menu items with an island influence. I actually said all of that out loud, and my friend scoffed. She flat out didn't believe that there was any merit to my idea. This led to a mock argument, and quite a bit of laughter. And that would've been the last of it, too, had this particular store not had a sign on the door for $2 pieces of chicken. Do you know who buys a single piece of chicken? People who just want to try what the chicken tastes like. People wanting to settle an argument. People who are going to dinner and don't want to ruin their appetites. People like us.

So, amid quite a bit of laughter, we ordered a single piece of chicken. As soon as we had done so, my friend ventured a question, "where do you guys get the chicken?" The lady behind the counter looked at us a little funny, but eventually responded that it "came from the mainland." Uh oh. Things were not looking good for yours truly.

When the food came out a few minutes later, my fate was all but sealed. It looked exactly like what I was used to seeing. Nothing about what we'd seen indicated that it'd taste any different, and I was just going through the motions. Mind you, this didn't mean it was somber at all. There was a lot of laughter throughout all of this. All of it was directed at me, but there was a ton of laughter nonetheless.

Sure enough, it was plain old KFC. Not island-style KFC, or some sort of seafood-based food, just plain old fried chicken. Cue more laughter. So much for my theory.
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