Question: What is City Chicken anyway? I know it's pork cubes on a stick, but how did it get its name?

        Answer: Well, sir, the Stupid Desk hates these folklore questions. Seems the best we can ever get is a consensus, never a definitive answer.

        Furthermore, real city chicken is pork and veal cubes, says Len Bleh, owner of Avril Bleh and Sons. Most places just sell pork, but a few butcher shops, his included, sell it in its purist form. Preferred method of cooking is on top of the stove, dusted with flour and simmered forever in some kind of stock.

        Fine. So we asked five local butchers and got one “I have no idea,” and two theories. Here goes:

        • Theory No. 1 dates way the heck back in time, when country folk raised chickens in the yard and Cincinnati was a major pork producing center. Pork was cheap, chicken wasn't. City folk, meanwhile, with no room to raise chickens, had to bite the bullet and buy it. When money was tight, they bought pork, cubed it, stuck it on a mini-skewer — it sort of looks like a chicken leg — and called it city chicken.

        • Theory No. 2, something our letter writer hinted at, is similar and also dates back to when pork was cheap and chicken, shipped in from the country, wasn't. Inventive cooks, tired of hearing “I'm sick of pork, I want a chicken leg,” fashioned a fake leg out of veal and pork cubes and told the family it was a city version of chicken.

        Oh, and here's something you didn't ask, but are about to get anyway: According to John Mariani's Encyclopedia of American Food & Drink (Lebhar-Friedman Books; $29.95), a Cincinnati oyster is “A slang term for pickled pigs' feet” — gag — and a cinci, lower case c, is 1880s slang for a short glass of beer.

        If you have a stupid question, send it to Ask a Stupid Question, Cincinnati Enquirer, 312 Elm St., Cincinnati OH 45202; fax:(513) 768-8330; e-mail: knipenquirer@yahoo.com.

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