THE NORTH RIDING PROJECT

Folk travel from miles around to feast on Fryup Fried Chicken, labouring for hours over desolate moors and through steep ravines. A handful of hardy locals perch at picnic tables and chomp greedily through the solitary menu item, buckets of crispy golden thighs, as tomorrow’s dinner pecks around their feet.  It is a little greasy, and the meat is tough.  But the effect is something indefinable: soon after the first bite your lips start to tingle, and you are enveloped by a feeling of mild euphoria.  They say the secret lies in the chicken feed, which incorporates a rare local mushroom, the blushing morel, that is deadly if eaten directly.  Locals call it Fryup fugu.  Madonna is said to have once paid a secret visit; Anthony Bourdain was forced to turn back due to landslides.  The two elderly brothers who own the tiny tumbledown shack that visitors insist serve up the best fried chicken on the planet, steadfastly refuse to give up their secrets.

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