FRIED DOUGH IS GOOD FOR YOU

"I GOT SOME HOT, FRESH FRIED DOUGH, LET ME TELL YOU some of my fried dough, it's good, it's golden brown, it'll take your tummy all the way down. It's delicious, it's nutritious, it'll really make you feel ambitious. Hey don't you be superstitious when I make fried dough it's no coast to coast like buttered toast and I'm your host and that's the most!"

Robert McIntyre, wheeler/dealer of Daddy's Fried Dough cart in Downtown Crossing, is proud of his product--he sings about it all day long. With good reason. The process: Gooey bread dough is mixed with sugar and tossed into a greasy kettle full of stagnant oil. The dough sizzles and floats about in its little pool of fat until crispy on the edges and golden brown. The product: a fluffy, floppy disk of delight. Instructions: Smother the succulent gobs with sugar, Bavarian cream, cinnamon or processed fruit `n sauce.

Fried dough brings alive the nostalgia of a baseball game and a yearning for a time when eating fat-filled food was okay, just because it tasted good. Fried dough is soul food. The epiphany of tearing off a hot piece, tasting its tingly sweetness and licking the powdered sugar and cinnamon from sticky fingers permanently sidelines Snackwell's.

And fried dough is not just a Six Flags phenomenon. Carts of dough and vats of oil abound during the Head of the Charles and along the Walk for Hunger and lucky for Harvard, Daddy will arrive for Springfest '99. The Diet Coke and Marlboro Lights set should stay home. Who's your Daddy?