Chicken Barb Sandwich

The chicken barb is a sandwich from Methuen, Massachusetts, and almost nowhere else: chicken pressure-cooked with a guarded blend of seasonings until it falls apart, pulled into shreds, and piled warm onto a toasted sesame-seed bun with mayonnaise and lettuce. The name is short for barbecue, though there is no smoke and no barbecue sauce in it; "barb" is simply what the Merrimack Valley has called pulled, seasoned chicken for eighty years. The sandwich is credited to the Tally Ho Inn in Methuen in the 1940s, and the recipe passed to a handful of local places, most famously Norm's White Horse, where it is still the only reason most customers come in. It is a regional secret rather than a regional style: the seasoning has never been published, and the shops that sell it buy the spice mix pre-blended, so even the cooks do not know the full list. It is eaten at the counter, on a paper plate, with a side of fries or a cup of the same chicken in broth.