Fried in lard, Barberton chicken is distinguished by a brittle red-gold crust that encloses juice-laden meat. It also differs from familiar fried chicken because the available pieces include not only wings, breasts, legs, drumettes, and thighs, but also backs—the result of an arcane technique of maximizing the amount of meat that one bird can offer. In the restaurants of Barberton (at the edge of Akron, Ohio), it is the anchor of a ritual feast that also includes a timbale of tart coleslaw, French fries, and a bowl of spicy tomato-rice hot sauce. Dinners come large, medium, or small, with whatever pieces the customer specifies. Recipes for the hot sauce have been batted around in newspaper food columns for decades.
Barberton chicken came to the New World from Serbia when the Topalsky family immigrated to the farmland of Ohio at the beginning of the twentieth century. (Cognates with similar genealogy can be found on Chicken Dinner Road in Kansas as well as in northern Indiana, at a boned and buttered perch restaurant called Teibel’s.) During the Depression, when the family dairy farm failed, Mike and Smilka Topalsky opened a restaurant called Belgrade Gardens in Mike’s father’s house. It had a normal repertoire of steaks and chops, but the Topalskys served their special fried chicken to the staff. Word got out, and soon customers began asking for chicken and hot sauce. Once it was put on the menu, Barberton chicken became such a sensation that three more restaurants opened offering the very same thing. Like Belgrade Gardens, the White House, DeVore’s Hopocan Gardens, and Milich’s Village Inn continue to thrive. The White House now has a number of locations in the area and is looking to franchise nationally.