To ride on the coattails of my BBQ thread, I humbly submit a fried chicken joint thread.
Title says it all. What is your favorite fried chicken joint and why? All styles welcome, chains are fine, but it has to be fried chicken someone can purchase.
Feel free to add side dishes, why they’re essentential to this place, and how they add to the experience.
My favorite has to be Brother’s Food Mart in and around New Orleans. It’s a gas station/convenience store with a food counter that sells fried chicken, catfish, meat pies, etc.
Their chicken is sublime. It’s very moist and just a bit greasy, with a seasoned breading that has a hint of lingering heat. Add a dash of Louisiana hot sauce and it’s fried chicken heaven.
Like yours, the best Fried Chicken in Stockton is from the deli counter at the WinCo Supermarket. This chicken has people lining up, behind me, whenever I’m in the store. The only problem is that their sides don’t measure up, though others might disagree.
Our local fried chicken chain in the NYC area is Kennedy Fried Chicken (the other KFC). They’re not really a chain - apparently any time a group of Middle Eastern men open a fried chicken restaurant within 100 miles of Times Square, they decide to name it after our 35th President. Their chicken isn’t all that special - but it’s good, it’s cheap, and you can get it late.
In the Akron OH area is a small town called Barberton. They’re famous for one thing–chicken. There are 3-5 restaurants that have been there for 50+ years, and when I moved here in the 1970s I thought it was superb. The last 10, not so special. They serve a side dish which everyone gets called “hot sauce.” It’s rice cooked in tomato broth seasoned with hot(Hungarian?) peppers. It’s truly good. You get fries/cole slaw as sides.
Now that I think about it, it’s actually quite distinctive to the area. Even a Wiki page about it. Barberton chicken - Wikipedia
On a brief tour during a road trip to Buffalo in 2006, we made a pitstop in Barberton to try some of the local chicken I’ve heard a bit about. Specifically, we stopped by White House Chicken (didn’t find Belgrade Gardens.) It was quite good, and anything deep-fried in lard automatically gets special attention from me. However, it was perhaps not quite as mind-blowing as I was expecting it to be, given the reputation. I have pictures and a review midway through this thread, under the name “Binko” for those interested.
Around here, Harold’s Chicken or the Chicken Shack in Evanston are my standard go-tos for fried chicken.
There used to be a Kennedy Fried Chicken down the street from my house. The weird things was it was on Birchmount Avenue and Kennedy Road was the next major street, one block over. We always that it was weird that they didn’t know what their address was. I wonder if there’s a connection…
I’d probably go for KFC, then Popeyes. I like Popeyes rice & beans better.
For a privately owned place though, I’d recommend this place in Monterey. Little Chicken House. Dinky little place with a huge rotating oven with dozens of chickens roasting. Don’t go there if you don’t want at least half a chicken and five pounds of fixins’ with it. You can’t even drive by the place without almost driving off the road because you were over powered by a cloud of cooking chicken smell. It’s a short distance from the presidio, so there are lots of soldiers who grab lunch there. Soldiers know how to eat, and where the grub is served up all plentiful like.
I’m headed to ECS right now! Seriously, I called in the order about five minutes ago and am going to enjoy some fried chicken and bluegrass music tonight.
Hattie’s Chicken Shack on Phila Street in Saratoga Springs, NY. Hands down the best fried chicken and the best atmosphere in the world. She opened in 1938, moved to the Phila Street location in 1968. Since I’ve left the area it got all gentrified and is now Hattie’s Restaurant™ of all things, and I’ve been afraid to go back for fear it’s all gone, but if anyone wants to give me a report on it please go ahead.
In Georgia it’s Mrs. Winner’s for me. YUM! Thankfully, I have moved to a small town that has no nearby Mrs. Winner’s - I have to take drugs to control my cholesterol and a good fried chicken place would be the death of me.
The funny thing is that I lived on Garnett, a mere half block down from the ECS when I was in college, for about nine months and never once did it occur to me or any of my roommates to step into that place. It was a bit frightening-looking, really. It was only a few years ago, nearly ten years after graduating, that I finally got in there and learned of what I was missing.
