FRY BOYS

And speaking of fried cheese (as I was, in the previous post about the sandwich at Cassell’s Hamburgers (that’s a close up of it above - the cheese is the flappy, wing-like things sticking out at the sides) – the other night I went to Loteria, a superior and not entirely inauthentic, Mexican restaurant on Hollywood Boulevard, with top English photographer Jason Oddy, who’s in town for one thing and another.

I always think the best thing about Loteria is the chicharron de queso, “griddle toasted Oaxaca and Jack Cheese with with corn tortillas, guacamole and salsa verde cruda” though I must say I always refer to it as the “cheese hat.” Young Oddy seemed puzzled by it at first:

But soon saw the appealing side:

You could perhaps think this was a move from anticipation to acclamation, as in Fry’s Five Boys chocolate, but without the desperation and pacification, and certainly without the realization that it’s Fry’s:

I know I ate a fair amount of Five Boys chocolate as a kid, though I’m pretty sure I ever went through the five stages.   I also think the chocolate was pretty ordinary but the packaging and the form was unbeatable.

And I started wondering whether there was any connection between Five Boys chocolate and Elizabeth Kübler-Ross’s five stage model of grief and bereavement.  It seems a little unlikely.  Five Boys was launched in 1902, and manufacturing ened in 1975. Kübler-Ross’s On Death and Dying wasn’t published till 1969. I haven’t the slightest evidence that Kübler-Ross ever ate or even knew about Fry’s Five Boys, and of course she was Swiss, so I imagine she wasn't a fan of English chocolate.

Still, I can’t help thinking there’s some curious convergence at work here.   And I’m pretty sure I’d buy a chocolate bar with five faces moulded into it labeled Denial, Anger, Bargaining, Depression, Acceptance.  Sounds like a project for Bompas and Parr.