News to Chew

Amid the media blitz touting its new grilled chicken – including the blessing of her highness, Oprah – KFC was staking its claim to offering a healthy alternative to its artery clogging menu of finger-licking goodness. Grilled chicken always seems like a good thing, right?

Well, it seems there’s a bit more flavor to the chicken than the secret blend of herbs and spices that the mouth-watering advertisements pitch: beef. Or beef powder and rendered beef fat, to be exact. And one competing restaurant chain isn’t taking this discovery lightly.

El Pollo Loco has a beef with KFC’s chicken and is taking aim in its TV commercials. According to the LA Times, the Southern California chain learned that KFC was using beef thanks to a customer’s tweet to El Pollo Loco’s Twitter account.

“The use of beef ingredients in grilled chicken just seems wrong to me, and we believe most consumers would agree,” said Steve Carley, chief executive of El Pollo Loco. In one television commercial, Carley stands in a cow pasture and talks about a “fun fact” concerning KFC’s grilled chicken, then discloses the beef ingredients.

El Pollo Loco chicken is marinated in herbs, spices and fruit juices and is grilled over an open flame. Apparently, KFC’s grilled chicken is cooked in an oven, with the oven racks providing the “grilled” representation.

Whether El Pollo Loco’s campaign helps itself and hurts KFC. We at News to Chew doubt it, though. Never underestimate the power of beef flavoring. Remember, not too long ago it was revealed that McDonald’s french fries where glazed with rendered beef fat, too. And we know how good those suckers are.

And if you can make chicken taste more like beef, then we’re all for it.

Just some news to chew on.

Last March News to Chew reported on a coffee shop in Maine where the waitresses served their java topless. Novel idea, perhaps, especially for Maine. But apparently someone in Vassalboro disliked the notion of D-cups serving coffee cups enough to burn down the establishment - the Grandview Topless Coffee Shop burned to the ground last week and authorities said arson was to blame.<p>

Well, it seems pyromania isn’t going to keep those waitresses’ tops on, as the owner has reopened his business less than a week later in a tent canopy beside the burned rubble. We will refrain from making remarks about whose poles were holding up the tent.

Besides, the waitresses had their tops on – apparently it was a bit too nippy to go without.

Just some news to chew on.

See video of the reopening here.

Amuse bouche: Why does Starbucks run out of coffee in the morning? Is it a way to force you to buy a latte instead? Happens a lot to me.

One guess which category this story falls under. Now, if you had to choose someone famous that you could lick, who would it be? Well, in the U.K. apparently actor Daniel Craig (that’s Bond, James Bond) is the top choice as the coolest. So cool, in fact, that to celebrate National Ice Cream Week, Del Monte Superfruit Smoothies has produced a frozen treat of the British actor with his bare, sculpted torso.

Really. Check out the promotional photo to the left. Mmmm. Sexy.

According to the London’s Daily Mail, the ice cream company (which, by the way merely licenses the Del Monte name) created the smoothie likeness after asking more than 1,000 women which male celebrity they would like to see on the end of a stick. And British women most wanted to lick Craig’s stick, though we won’t assume only those of the female gender would want to run their tongues over that icy cool bod.

Getting their fill of Craig’s head means less than 100 calories for each pop and it comes in blueberry, pomegranate and cranberry flavors.

And who else did those orally deprived Brits want to suck on? Jude Law came in second, followed by Hugh Grant Welshmen Steve Jones and Tom Jones took fourth and fifth places, while Scottish film star Ewan McGregor came in sixth.Three Davids – Cameron, Beckham and Tennant were seven, eight and nine, while the top ten was rounded out by silver fox Philip Schofield.

News to Chew has no idea who some of those names are, though we are impressed with singer Tom Jones’ fifth place showing, ahead of that wanker David Beckham. Apparently, it’s not unusual to be loved anyone.

Before someone here decides to nick this really stupid idea from the Brits, we suggest this to our American women: go to the local market’s freezer section, buy a box of Popsicle Big Sticks, and use your imagination. Because we’d hate to see what the results of an American version of the poll might be.

Just some news to chew on.