Zsa Zsa got all the attention. Who was it, though, who did the solid work, who left the impressive oeuvre? It was her sister, Eva Gabor. It was Eva who, as Manhattan penthouse-dwelling Lisa, inexplicably married a guy from her grandfather’s pinochle club and went on to make the haute couture hillbilly hausfrau of Green Acres a cherished standard of low-brow TV culture.
Sometimes it’s the less flashy sibling who, while the big spotlight might not be on them, makes the biggest contributions. Fast Eddie’s Bon Air may get all the attention, all the adulation. It’s famous. But Fast Eddie’s Fried Chicken? That Fast Eddie’s is the Eva Gabor, it’s fair to say, of the Alton dining scene.
Of course, many readers are asking themselves, “What the hell’s he talking about?” Just kidding—readers are accustomed to these amusing divagations from us. They’re asking, “Fast Eddie’s Fried Chicken? We know of the Big Elwood and the half-pound burger. But fried chicken? How much beer were we drinking not to remember that on the menu?” Yes. Fast Eddie’s fried chicken. Plump, a crispy-crackly crust, speckled with pepper, the cinnamon brown skin sweet with its own, glistening fat. Fast Eddie’s fried chicken is successful—it just isn’t at Fast Eddie’s.
Back in the 1970s, when he was not quite fast but merely brisk, Eddie Sholar Sr. debuted a modest chicken joint up on Alton’s Central Avenue. It was successful, but Eddie, though just 17, already had bigger designs, ones he eventually realized down on Broadway in 1981, which became the home of free popcorn, cheap food, cold beer, and the largest concentration of weekend bikers outside the Sturgis Exxon station on half-price burrito night.
For non-Altonites, getting there is part of the experience. Alton, Illinois is, along with places like Muscatine, Iowa, and Quincy, Illinois, an iconic upper Mississippi River town. Brick streets, with massive, boldly upright homes, classic examples of Queen Anne, Second Empire, and Italianate architecture that tower behind ancient sycamores and maples. Entire blocks that look like layouts of Architectural Digest. And, as with every 'burb that mushroomed up along the river, there are those neighborhoods that long ago seemed to have gone to seed, to have settled into desuetude sometime back in the 1950s or '60s, slowly falling to sleep and then into a long, long decay. Tar-patched roofs, sheds and garages that tilt and sway, weedy patches, overgrown lots.
That’s the neighborhood where the original Fast Eddie’s sits, still run by the Sholar family. It was once some kind of Dairy Queen–like drive-in, long gone. Small-town tiny, it holds the ground right across from a trio of boarded-up houses, the sidewalk glittery with broken glass. The neighborhood isn’t lock-your-car-door dangerous. It’s just a locale that’s developed a gentle patina of sorts. And as if to reassure you it’s really fine, there is that giant hen, sporting a jaunty top hat, that offers an upbeat welcome.
Take a look at the menu boards in the window, and it’s immediately clear: The hot fat fryers here are busy. It’s not just chicken. Livers. Gizzards. Fish. Shrimp. Along with breaded sides like cauliflower, okra, onion rings, and crab rangoon. And there are burgers and tacos, and pork tenderloin.
All of it’s packed in pasteboard boxes atop mounds of crinkle cut fries. You’re taking it with you. There isn’t any seating here. Looking in the windows, there doesn’t seem to be much room even for standing inside, not with the fryers bubbling, the mounds of freshly fried bird and heaps of fries waiting to be boxed, the ice cream machines that turn out cones, cups, shakes, and sundaes.
You can eat in the car. But food this good deserves better. Fortunately, Alton has it. From Fast Eddie’s Fried Chicken, make you way back through town, stopping only at Duke Bakery for some chocolate brownie cookies or “brookies,” or chocolate cream horns or some bags of Schwegel’s Good Looking Caramel Popcorn. Then make for Riverview Park, on Riverview Drive at Bluff Street.
You know how you drive along the Great River Road and look up at those towering bluffs and wonder what the view would be like from up there? This park answers that question pretty dramatically. The vista—you can see all the way up to Grafton and to the left, the locks downriver—is unparalleled and like Fast Eddie’s Fried Chicken, it seems to be largely ignored by those outside Alton.
It’s October. The opportunity for day trips is closing. Fast Eddie’s Fried Chicken has winter hours. But that bluff-top picnic at Riverview Park isn’t going to be quite as enjoyable when those winter winds are whipping off the cliffs like the exhalations of the Piasa bird. So go now, when the leaves are changing and the sun feels like the farewell caress of the season. The view’s wonderful, and the chicken’s to match.
