Writer's backyard chicken produces eggs superior in taste

By Richard Pyle
Associated Press

"Yeowzer" the cat warily eyes a chicken that has taken up residence in the back yard of New York Times restaurant critic William Grimes. Grimes says he can only speculate on how the chicken picked his yard. Associated Press

For openers, Grimes is the chief restaurant critic for the New York Times – a man who might be expected to have a few recipes for tasty fried or fricasseed fowl tucked away somewhere.

Moreover, his back yard already was home to a gang of semi-feral felines led by Bruiser and Crusher, hard-case urban survivors more likely to take a bite out of a feathered intruder than welcome it.

But nature has its own rules, and it wasn't long before the tall, shiny blue-black chicken had managed to cow the cats and was sharing space at the feeding station. For a time, it was even wolfing down store-bought cat food.

Grimes can only speculate on how the chicken picked his yard for pecking. After the Bangladeshi taxi drivers next door denied ownership, he concluded it probably had flown the coop at a live poultry market a few blocks away.

Whatever its origin, it was soon clear that this chicken was no ... well, chicken.

Once, when Grimes looked out the window and saw the chicken surrounded by cats and "writhing" in apparent agony, he feared it had bought the farm. "Half an hour later it was fine," he reported. "It had been taking a dust bath."

Another night, a police helicopter swooped low over the neighborhood, searchlight probing for a suspected lawbreaker. The downdraft wreaked havoc in the Grimes back yard, but the chicken turned up the next morning, chipper as ever. "I looked at it with new respect," he said.

Grimes – whose own tastes in chicken range freely, from the honey-dipped fried chicken at the Times cafeteria to the poached chicken with Albufera sauce at Alain Ducasse's temple of culinary intemperance – wasn't sure what chickens normally eat, except that it probably wasn't cat food. Soon his mother was sending packages from the local feed store in LaPorte, Texas.

Later, Grimes returned from a Midwest trip with a 25-pound bag of chicken feed in his luggage. "I was afraid the airport security might think it was heroin or something," he said.

He also surmised from its appearance – and the fact that it didn't crow the neighborhood awake at dawn – that his fugitive fowl was a hen.

This was borne out when eggs started appearing regularly, now up to five or six a week.

Grimes duly reported to Times readers that whether hard-boiled or "fried in a little butter," his back-yard product was superior in taste to two types of organic eggs grown on farms in Virginia and upstate New York.

"The gradations of egg flavor are very subtle, which means that freshness can easily tilt the balance," Grimes wrote. While other yolks "turned slightly dry and mealy with cooking, my yolks stayed fluffy and moist. The whites had not a hint of rubberiness."

New York chefs would kill for Grimes to say that about their omelets.

Since writing about his chicken, Grimes said, he has been deluged with letters, phone calls and e-mails from people offering advice – such as feed it plenty of calcium. He has appeared on radio shows and received several book offers.

Predictably, the pecksniffs at the rival New York Post poked into whether keeping a chicken in the city was illegal. "The answer was no," says Grimes.

Among suggested names for the chicken, Grimes is leaning toward "Vivian."

Meanwhile, he plans to build a small chicken house, up on cinder blocks with a ramp, near the plastic-foam igloo where the sheepish cats reside.

But Grimes can claim to have found at least interim answers to two of the world's most enduring mysteries: One, the chicken came before the egg. Two, it crossed the road to get to his place.

Editor's note: Alas! As this story went to press, the New York Times was reporting that the chicken in Grimes' yard had – well – flown the coop.