Best Foods of the 80s, Microwaves, the History of Fast Food Chicken

Have you ever cried over an original chicken sandwich (inspired) by Burger King? Adam Richman has. And now, so have I. Not due to the sandwich itself—though surely there are some out there good enough to drum up a few tears—but misty eyes were had, over Zoom nonetheless, when the host and I got together to make a homemade, copycat version. What can I say? There’s something strangely intimate about exchanging stories about food. More on that later.

Richman sent over the recreation recipe as a nod to his new series Adam Eats the 80s, which debuted this past Sunday on the HISTORY channel. The concept behind the program is simple: to take a closer look at all the pop culture oddities and retro foods that defined the decade. Pop Rocks, Auntie Anne’s, Slice soda. All of it.

That brings us back to the tears. During production, Richman and his team were on the hunt for a 38-year-old Ghostbusters branded Hi-C Ecto Cooler. They eventually found it, which is interesting enough, but the real story, as Richman explains, is the Ghostbusters memorabilia collector who had it. He started his hobby because Ghostbusters meant so much to him as a child. It changed how he saw the world, and his retelling regaled Richman to the point of the host becoming emotional. “I’m sitting there, supposed to talk about fucking fruit punch,” Richman says between bites of chicken sandwich. He couldn’t. Instead, he imitates a few quick heaves. “He’s like, got me in my feelings.”

To hear Richman explain it, that is the essence of the 80s—a decade whose touchstones are remarkably ripe with nostalgia—before the Internet and mobile phones took over the world. Ghostbusters was a movie about normal guys with extraordinary capabilities. Kids let themselves in after school, nuked a Hot Pocket as an afternoon snack, and settled in for an ABC After School Special. Fast food was booming, and the Burger King Chicken Sandwich was a new invention for the growing circuit.

So we made our own version, got a little emotional, and talked about how the 80s changed the way this country ate forever.

This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.

Esquire: Listen, I’m comfortable with raw meat and cutting things up, but I have never put chicken in a blender. I may never forgive you for making me do that.

Adam Richman: Right? It’s wild watching it turn into paste. I feel it’s like a Man vs. Food challenge. If you’ve ever eaten the modern chicken sandwich—the hipster chicken sandwich, that’s the chicken sandwich that every gastro pub has—it is nearly always a cutlet, and the BK chicken sandwich is like the cubic zirconia of cutlets. It’s like cut-lite. But that’s what the McNugget is. Famously, chicken McNuggets come in four distinct sizes, right? It’s bell, boot, ball, and bone. It refers to their shapes and it has to do with cook time and the evenness of cook time. But that’s the truth. That is rubric.

I recall after leaving a team practice in high school and being on the bus with a friend and going like, “everywhere’s coming out with a chicken sandwich, right?” Then years later, I’m doing my research and was like, “Holy shit, there is a reason that happened.” During this sort of “Poultry Renaissance” that occurred, ranchers in the 70s carried over massive debt into the 80s, and they liquidated huge amounts of their herd. So therefore you have less cattle, and less cattle raises the price of beef. So fast food pivots to chicken.

If you think that Adam Richman circa sophomore year of high school is acutely aware of the provisional beef shortage or what it means to pivot in terms of your food concept, no—I had just gotten an earring. That was the driving voice of my identity at world outlook.

I know there were all these other chicken sandwiches as well; like, an international smorgasbord of Burger King chicken sandwiches. That felt like simpler times.

That’s the other thing that for me. I’m a news junkie, so on the way to set, I listen to The Daily and NPR. I do this “news download.” It’s nice because then I go to set and [the 80s] is the last decade before the Internet—it’s the last decade. We all had the same finite channels to entertainment. I think that was the coolest part about the 80s stuff for me; we’re so divided now and things are so tumultuous.

Back then, Reaganomics had the economy booming, but he had actually also passed a law that says you could advertise directly to children. So there’s a myriad products like the Happy Meal and sugar cereals with video game tie-ins, Donkey Kong, Pac Man, Mr. T. I highly recommend you just… for your own edification look up what Robin Hood Prince of Thieves cereal looked like.

It seems like the 80s was a latchkey era, where kids let themselves in, fixed themselves something to eat and sat down and watched some after school TV. Do you feel like that influenced the foods that were created?

Dude, I want to jump through this little tiny screen on my old crappy Mac and hug you so much for that ’cause I’ve been saying this; I was a latchkey kid. My parents were divorced, so it was joint custody. I would be at my dad’s or be at my mom’s, and they both had to work to support me.

I think that was the first generation who saw that, and that coincides with the increasing availability of the microwave, in particular—shout out Amana Radarange. They’re not giving me any money, but I remember that’s what we had. I burnt some Aunt Jemima French toast and it was so bad. I wasn’t allowed to use the microwave for a while.

I feel like this was the decade where the quickness of food had to keep up with people and-

100 percent.

There’s this massive Jell-o craze. The microwave is exploding, Lunchables even. It’s this grab it and go culture. It’s fascinating how it’s indicative of so much else that was going on during that decade.

Yes. What’s very fascinating is you almost had two things occurring at the same time, right? Essentially, Reaganomics floods the economy with loads of money, but also increases the foothold that corporate food can have. Like I say, you’re not only having advertising [go] directly to kids, but you’re having tie-ins with pop culture and all the foods that kids are eating.

What are some of the pieces of the 80s that we’re still seeing today that have lasted that test of time?

First of all, you have certain iconic brands, and I really do think that you’re finding success with the brands that can continue to pivot and pirouette like a ballerina. They evolve, which takes a lot of money. Brands like Pizza Hut, Dominos, McDonald’s. The moral of the story is the number of ways to change is limited, but the number of ways to stay the same is infinite, and you find that there are certain businesses that have just sort of decided we’re going to do this thing extraordinarily well and do that forever. You look at Cinnabon and Cinnabon was a father and son working together. Thank God the son interceded and said, “don’t add raisins” because, God, don’t ruin Cinnabon’s like that.

Auntie Anne’s pretzels was again, a female entrepreneur in the 80s who fought for a mall space. She would’ve set up a farmer’s market stand and she fought for a mall space. She endures to this day because rather than start doing ancient grains pretzels and doing pretzels with, I don’t know, with kale and huitlacoche… you know what I mean? I think that’s part of what makes them so comforting and enduring classics.

But if it weren’t for Adam Eats the 80s, I never could have had another 1980s McDonald’s beef tallow-fried French fry. A millionaire has a heart attack, [then] stages this multi-million dollar advertising campaign warning of the dangers of fast food consumption. The industry pivots. They go to vegetable oil, and the flavor is gone. That’s an enduring aspect of the 80s.

The 80s inspires a remarkable amount of nostalgia. It reminds me of a conversation I had with an Uber driver who immigrated to the states. He told me his favorite restaurant was Olive Garden—another 80s creation—because he started school in Alabama. He didn’t have family here, but he knew if he went to Olive Garden, it would always taste the same. It became his version of home.

To me, it wasn’t just the foods. It was the packaging as well. Opening a soda with a rip top can, and then you’d have this ring and it could be a power ring, or you could propose to your third grade girlfriend with it. That moment… that’s what I mean. It’s funny, I got oddly sentimental hearing about that Olive Garden and the Uber driver.

I think I’m a pretty optimistic cat, but I think cynicism creeps into any adult, and I will say this—especially when you find collectors of things from the 80s—the age was so different and there was an innocence. Most of us that have the buying power now were children or adolescents in the 80s, and now there’s such a warm nostalgia. It’s not like when my mom has stuff from the 60s and remembers protests and violent dissent within families.

There was a guy we interviewed who has the Guinness Book of World Records-recognized largest Ghostbusters collection. We went there to try to find an original 38-year-old HI-C Ecto Cooler juice box. Then he hits me with this in the beginning. I said, “Why Ghostbusters? Why this thing”? It was the simplicity and the gentleness of his voice. He said, “I didn’t have the easiest childhood and things weren’t always easy growing up and I looked at the Ghostbusters: they didn’t have superpowers, they weren’t rich, all they had was their bravery, their intelligence, each other and their friendship. When things were rough for me, I could go to this place where guys who are just smart, good guys, who were brave and cared for each other.”

And I’m sitting there supposed to talk about fucking fruit punch. I’m supposed to talk about HI-C Ecto Cooler and how the packaging of the toothpaste and of the chewing gum looked alike. Now I’m sitting there like it’s the end of Lassie Come Home. I’m like, so which one is your favorite? And he’s like, got me in my feelings, but that’s the thing and it’s funny.

[Richman pulls out a packaged action figure]

I deliberately pulled this out to show you, I got so nostalgic myself while doing this. My late dad, his favorite show in the world was M*A*S*H. While filming, we were in Fort Collins, Colorado filming at an amazing 80s pizza joint called Totally 80s Pizza. I go to this store and I find a Hawkeye Pierce M*A*S*H 4077 Hawkeye action figure and yes, that’s supposed to be Alan Alda. But it’s special.

With all the good nostalgia, is there a particular food invention of the 80s that is best left in the past?

I think I like that the 80s spurred forth the need to create a bunch of stuff, but stuff that I think we really can leave in the past would be maybe some of the gross candy. We have an episode on the gross candies of the 80s. There were candies where they were giant plastic noses and you’d pick candy boogers. I just…

The one thing I miss is Pop Rocks.

Oh my God. I love some Pop Rocks.

Adam samples the elusive Domino’s Breakfast Pizza in Adam Eats the 80s.

To kind of shoot my own question in the foot, you can’t really leave anything behind because it’s the foundation on everything else that’s been created.

You know what I’ve even found? If I miss something, you miss something different than I do. The fact that we are both missing food of a bygone era kind of unites people. It was almost like the fact that you couldn’t get it made you even more wistful [and] more nostalgic for them. By the way, you’ll be very happy that there is a whole section devoted to Pop Rocks. We found a man named Russ Vandiver in Augusta, Georgia. One of the greatest humans in the world. This man opened his home to us. We took lunch on his patio, on his front steps, and he has the biggest vintage collection of curiosity candy.

This is, handily, one of the most emotional conversations I’ve had about food.

I just encourage everyone that while the want for nostalgic food is out there—I say this as a man who bought a Reggie Jackson candy bar vintage on eBay—don’t eat it. On Yom Kippur, we filmed at Rancho Obi-Wan (the Star Wars collection) and I broke my Yom Kippur fast with a 41-year-old Star Wars cookie from Pepperidge Farm. I think God’s disappointed. That’s a little PSA from your buddy.

New episodes of The Food That Built America and Adam Eats the 80s airs Sundays at 9 and 10PM ET/PT only on The HISTORY Channel.