America’s ‘Fried Chicken War’ | Hacker News Reader

America’s ‘Fried Chicken War’

bbc.com

86 pointselorant105 comments

For those in the SE US, I recommend trying Publix fried chicken, if you haven't already. I get a whole fried chicken for less than $10, and it's better than anything I've had in a restaurant. The trick is to call an hour ahead, and have them make it fresh for you. That's half a fried chicken, plus another half as fixin's!

grocery store fried chicken can be amazing. A local store in my old neighborhood ( SW Dallas ) would cook a fresh batch on Saturday afternoons. so good and very affordable.

Safeway has some of the best chicken tenders.

damn, i didn’t even know the call ahead was an option - grew up in central Florida. On the left coast, Vons fried chicken is phenomenal imo

Besides the fresh preparation, the next best thing about call-ahead is that you can ask them to do all dark meat, which I prefer.

I had it in Atlanta and it was great.

Confirmed and seconded.

Publix fried chicken has even made some top 10 lists for chicken/fried chicken reserved for restaurants.

I grew up on Publix fried chicken. If you find yourself relocated to FL and invited to a House Party/BBQ/Picnic/Bible Study, bring Publix friend chicken and you'll make immediate friends.

Love that they use lard vs. the unhealthy vegetable seed oils that all places use nowadays.

Just like how McDonald's used to use beef tallow.

Best fried chicken has to be Korean fried chicken at this point. Double frying it gives the inside the tenderness temperature while the outside is perfectly crispy.

I've been curious about McDonald's fries since I think they are tasty. There are many articles around that still say they use beef products in their french fries. According to their website they do not use beef, but a "beef flavoring" that contains milk products and not beef product.

https://www.mcdonalds.com/us/en-us/product/small-french-frie...

Yes this is true. It's a beef flavoring. My father spent the majority of his career in food-processing engineering working in a factory that made McDonald's french fries and confirmed this was the case. They're also par-cooked (pre-fried) before being flash frozen, and they don't use a batter or seasoning. Interesting tidbit, all of their competitors had their fries made in the same facility. I believe most of them even used the same type of potatoes.

I’ve started using lard as my secret ingredient. Everyone loves my cooking, except one acquaintance who turned out to be vegetarian. I make sure to let people know what my “secret ingredient” is before they eat now.

We recently deviated from our normal wings place to get some korean fried chicken and it was heavenly. Excellent texture, great seasonings and very creative fusion-style sides.

> Best fried chicken has to be Korean fried chicken at this point.

Two things I don't like about Korean fried chicken:

- Some places don't seem to marinade the meat enough, so the tasty fried skin is met with bland white meat inside; and

- Many places consider the drumette and flats to be separate pieces, while Southern fried chicken places consider the entire wing as one piece.

You first points is not a property of the food style, just bad cooking.

The bland meat seems to be endemic among Korean fried chicken places here (and I'm talking chain restaurants, which are supposed to be more consistent) — I'm not sure if it's the food style or cooking skill.

I've tried Korean fried chicken quite few times and I was disappointed. We even supposedly have quite a bit of good Korean restaurants here, but alas KFC or even air-fried frozen chicken always won me.

What city have you tried it in? Its relatively new in the US and it was becoming trendy so there are a lot of places that still do a pretty bad job since most people don't have a baseline. Its basically like sushi 15 years ago. So far in Chicago, I've only found one place that comes close to what I had in Tokyo's Koreatown (which admittedly isn't actually Korea)

Auckland, NZ. Plenty of good (and cheap btw) Korean food here. Just not fried chicken. Or Vietnamese.

Have you tried the Almond Chicken at Pocha?

I remember going to place perhaps right next to it was being unimpressed for countless time. Might try soon!

Though whenever I'm in CBD I go to Boracay Garden - filipino food was my biggest discovery in NZ (admittedly it's only two same dishes - pork sisig and chicken adobo).

There's beautiful things produced when something made traditionally suddenly hits a new culture that looks at it in new ways.

Korea with fried chicken, NY with pizza, Australian/NZ with coffee.

My ex-gf’s dad from the South made us fried chicken for Thanksgiving Dinner one year. He wouldn’t let on anything about his recipe or methods but it had this distinct buttery taste (which was awesome), I figure frying in clarified butter was part of his secret.

Wow, never knew I'd be talking about cooking on HN! I learned from Seriouseats (correction: the Food Lab book[1]) to double fry your restaurant fried chicken leftovers (or don't even wait for them to be leftovers) and, most importantly, make a dipping sauce (or two, or three) to match your current craving[2].

[1] https://bookshop.org/books/the-food-lab-better-home-cooking-...

[2] https://www.seriouseats.com/2012/03/upgrade-your-fried-chick...

I did some research a year back on what food critics consider to be the "best fried chicken in America." I took every list of best fried chicken that I could find on the internet going back two decades, parsed out closed restaurants and made a spreadsheet of over 240 fried chicken joints. Each mention on a list was one "vote" for the best fried chicken in America (and therefore the world). I came out with a definitive list of the best places to get fried chicken... a Fried Chicken Bucket List, if you will. [1]

In case anyone's wondering, #1 (Willie Mae's Scotch House) came in at 22/25 votes and #2 (Gus's World Famous Chicken) came in at 16/25 votes.

One thing I noticed while researching the top fried chicken restaurants - a LOT of them use lard instead of vegetable oil or something else. Also, duration of brine was at least 24 hours.

Another thing that I'll mention is that fried chicken from Willie Mae's is incredibly similar to Korean fried chicken - in fact, it's also double fried. Would love to hear from others that have tried it to see if they think the same, too!

I'm going to need to give Chicken Mary's and Chicken Annie's a try on my next roadtrip.

[1] https://thehighestcritic.com/munchies/the-fried-chicken-buck...

I moved to SF last year from SC and it has been a royal pain to find a good fried chicken joint.

Friends, if you find yourselves in the southeast do your best to get into a Bojangles.

Any suggestions for a good chicken joint in the Bay Area?

Get the fried chicken sandwich from RT Rotisserie (they do deliver) - it's the fast-casual arm of the acclaimed Rich Table restaurant.

All of the food at RT Rotisserie is incredible (their menu isn't large), but the fried chicken sandwich is especially notable (along with the lamb pita sandwich).

Yeah sando and the buttermilk rotisserie chicken is legit

The Front Porch is aight, it’s not the south though. Oakland has some downscale places that are more authentic. And then there’s great Korean fried chicken but that’s a whole different game.

Bojangles is the truth. These days whenever I find myself back in Durham once a year, I always stop by CookOut for their tray and Bojangles for chicken and the biscuits and the gravy.

Legend has it they put crack in that chicken that's why it's so good.

Biscuitville. Why won't they expand?

NC resident here and when I saw fried chicken I thought Bojangles. It never gets old to me.

Smithfield Chicken and BBQ also has a lot of locations in the southeast and has very good fried chicken.

Can only speak for the east bay but Minnie Bells in the Emeryville public market is my favorite. For a different flavor check out Abura ya in Oakland too

I did not had a chance to try it myself before quarantine started, but a couple friends of mine independently raved about Angeline's Louisiana Kitchen in Berkeley.

Strongly depends on your taste, so here's some very different styles:

miss ollie's (oakland) minnie bell's (emeryville) 900 grayson (berkeley) lois the pie queen (oakland) hopscotch (oakland)

If you just can't leave SF, try Town Hall.

+1 for 900 grayson (esp - their version of chicken and waffles)

Giant Chef in concord too.

Hard Knox is pretty great

San Tung in SF has some incredible chinese fried chicken

I know this is kind of heresy but there isn’t good fried chicken in the Bay Area and I’ve traveled the country in search of fried chicken. I can’t tell you how many times people have said “omigod you have to try so and sos” only to be disappointed over and over.

The best I’ve found in the US is Howlin Rays in LA (obviously) followed by Ms T in Chicago followed by the Gus’s chain.

In the Bay Area, KFC is still the most reliable.

I'd agree SF could have better Southern-style fried chicken. But at the KFC level Krispy Krunchy Chicken is pretty damn great :)

I haven't tried KKC yet. It's on my list. Also, Thomas Keller's fried chicken is wildly overrated also. Perfect fry but very unseasoned. Not worth a trip up.

Popeyes is a good one. They've got Tuesday's Leg and Thigh for a very cheap price.

I personally like their Chicken Sandwich and 2 Can Dine deal.

There are some good Korean fried chicken places in Sunnyvale. It's a bit lighter than normal fried chicken, still just as delicious.

Not a lot of good fried food here.

I have only found one reasonably good fried fish place and most of the french fries in the area aren’t great.

Oh man, so many options. Good thing i love trying them all :D

Traditional style:

RT Rotisserie, Brenda's, Hard Knox, Rusty's Southern, Brown Sugar Kitchen

Personally I'm a fan of the non-Southern-style fried chicken

Wing Wangs, Hot Sauce and Panko, San Tung, Rintaro

All Time Fav is Tokyo Fried Chicken in Montery Park (LA)

Everything is just perfectly cooked. chefs kiss

I'd love to choose a side. Sadly, I'm living in Copenhagen after living in the U.S. for many years and there's no fried chicken war and barely any fried chicken. I recently found one joint where you can get a decent fried chicken sandwich, though that's about as far as it goes.

It's such a shame because the chicken you can buy here is, to my taste, of much higher quality compared to that in the U.S. The tenderness is incredible, and it's so moist it's almost impossible to overcook. I'm not really sure why it hasn't caught on here. Perhaps it's simply a matter of preference/taste.

I'd love to know which place serves fried chicken sanwiches in Copenhagen, could you share that?

Of course. Jagger [1] is the one I'm speaking of.

[1]: https://jaggerfastfood.com/menu

The fried chicken sandwich/burger at Snack & Blues is top notch though - any other recommendations?

Haven't tried that one. Thank you for the tip!

I recommend the one from Jagger. Best one I've found.

I don't know if it is any good by discerning fried-chicken standards, but I would be amiss not to put in a plug for the American fried-chicken destination of my youth: Frankenmuth, MI (AKA Michigan's little Bavaria):

https://www.frankenmuth.org/dining/world-famous-chicken/

The blandest chicken you can get. It's such a soulless midwestern plain Jane place to eat (Zehnder's)

I believe you, and I would probably agree if had it again today, but nostalgia has its own flavor, ya know?

These days I guess they'd at least give you Tabasco or Sriracha on the side?

Yep - my family makes a trip to Frankenmuth in November/December each year. We walk around the shops downtown, get stuffed with fried chicken and those delicious noodles at Zehnders, and then wrap up with a walk around Bronner's.

Chicken Mary's is the only place I've ever been offered fried chicken with a side of spaghetti. It's good, too.

Jollibee's also has fried chicken with spaghetti! It's a Filipino thing and it's super good. Not sure where they have locations other than California, though.

They have a NYC branch.

I argue that they use entirely too much sugar in their spaghetti. Not that I have some moral outrage about sugar in the stuff, but it was actively very sweet.

Ah, interesting but makes sense. I _think_ the sweetness level is on purpose but could be wrong. I do remember that from when I've had it though.

Yes, Filipino spaghetti is definitely intended to be sweet--it uses banana ketchup in the sauce. Bananas were used as a substitute for tomatoes due to the Philippines' relative abundance of the former.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banana_ketchup

Banana ketchup usage for Filipino spaghetti came about during a tomato sauce shortage in the Second World War:

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/filipino-cuisine...

There's one close to Port Authority. I tried it once. It was ok, but not so great.

Honestly speaking, when I lived in Midtown West, there was a hole-in-the-wall Chinese place called China Gourmet on 8th and 53rd I think and their plain fried half chicken was amazing. It also was so hot that you could even spice it up at home with some pepper and a squeeze of lemon if you wanted to.

interesting. in the south we have "chicken'n waffles", it's waffles and syrup served with fried chicken. weird, I know, but it is a very tasty combination.

Chicken and waffles is probably my favorite thing to introduce to someone. They can’t believe it’s a thing before they try it, and after they wonder where it’s been all their life.

It's pretty big in Seattle, too. As another commenter said, the sugar in the pasta sauce is gross though, and entirely an Asian thing.

Jollibee is expanding in the US anyplace that has a large Filipino population, especially NYC and northern NJ (you already mentioned CA). In the Philippines, spaghetti is more sweet than savory, and often has sliced up hot dogs in the sauce—it is what it is, but I've always preferred the savory Italian-American style with lots of tomatoes, sausage, mushrooms, and peppers in the sauce. Culturally, Filipino spaghetti is more associated with kid's birthday parties (there are a lot of these) than grown up food, but adults love it because of nostalgia.

Northern Virginia I believe.

Definitely some locations in Canada too.

The fried chicken is alright, comparable to others but I can't say I was fond of the spaghetti. It clashed with my mind as I wasn't expecting something so sweet... I think even regular ketchup has less sweetness but it was super popular as I am pretty sure almost /every/ table in the place had an order of it.

The best I've eaten was from a stand at a Dominican Republic heritage festival in Providence, RI sometime between 1989-1991. A little, old, Dominican woman cooked the chicken. It was loaded with flavor including some spice.

Recently I picked up friend chicken from a small restaurant in Providence, RI called North. It was their take on chicken karaage. It was crispy but tender and was spiced with something mildly hot. It's my new favorite.

I prefer sticking with the small places. They're not afraid to spice to local tastes rather than spice for the median person in the US.

Another Kansas chicken place worth mentioning is the Brookville Hotel. It’s two lies for the price of one—no longer in Brookville (now in Abilene) and no longer a hotel (but they have some old rooms preserved as a museum). But it serves half a fried chicken per person, plus all the fixings (creamed corn, mashed potatoes, coleslaw, and more), at a sit-down white tablecloth establishment, for under 20 per plate.

If you're ever in Kansas City and want to try serious good, cheap fried chicken, Go Chicken Go was pretty good last I was there. It has all the ambiance of a Greyhound bus station bathroom, but the chicken was really good.

Also if you’re in Kansas City and want to get food at a sit down place, Stroud’s pan friend chicken is the local spot. It’s become a little more “middle class” than its humble roots were, so it’s a little pricier, but it’s delicious. My uncle says it tastes exactly like my grandma used to make (which I unfortunately never got to try). Their cinnamon rolls are deliciously ooey gooey too.

If you’re in KC or surrounding suburbs on business there’s almost definitely one nearby.

You want to talk value... Harolds fried chicken in the south side of Chicago has half a fried chicken, a bed of fries, two slices of wonderbread and a shot of coleslaw all smothered in mild sauce for less than 5 dollars.

I'm sure some pedant is about to come out with "oh really, the cole slaw is smothered in mild sauce?" Yes. Nothing in that bag avoids the sweet tang of mild sauce shoved through bulletproof glass.

It's the greatest food in the world.

Harolds is really good, but if you’re in Minneapolis go high dollar and get the Tennessee Hot from Revival.

Ooh - I will be in Minneapolis once this whole global shutdown thing is over, so I'll definitely head that way

It inspired an entire Freddie Gibbs song (after the one in Gary) although from what I hear the farther west you go the better. I’m certainly not going all the way out to Hoffman Estates though, chicken be damned

Salina native here who never thought I'd see Brookville Hotel on HN.

Brookville Hotel chicken really is great, a lot of food, but great. If anyone reading this is ever driving down I70, you won't go wrong stopping there, right off the interstate in Abilene. Hey, make a whole trip of it and visit the Eisenhower Museum, too, they have done a lot of remodeling and it is a fascinating slice of WWII and Eisenhower's presidency.

The only way to make fried chicken fast preserving its inner moisture is using a pressure fryer. That's the innovation that enabled KFC to become a fast food chain.

And here I thought it was buttermilk...

It is if you have the time. Doesn't scale well I'd imagine :)

Doesn't that take hours?

I wasn't talking about KFC. I thought fast just referred to the actual cooking process.

I thought it was the 11 secret herbs and spices

You probably think you're getting fresh chicken when you pull through the KFC drive thru window right before it closes too....

Coincidentally I was just last night reading about another "Fried Chicken War", which was a rivalry between two hotels in the Catskill Mountains arising from a guest/manager dispute.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catskill_Mountain_House#The_Fr...

I've been searching long and hard for the best fried chicken for all my life. I'll need to give Chicken Mary's and Chicken Annie's a try the next chance I get.

So far, the best has by far been Willie Mae's Scotch House - and the country's food critics seem to agree. [1]

[1] https://thehighestcritic.com/munchies/the-fried-chicken-buck...

Babe's in North Texas, several locations near Dallas, has got to be the best fried chicken I've ever had. Easily.

Should have read more. Beat me to it. I agree

https://ifunny.co/picture/how-to-find-kentucky-on-a-map-hat-...

if you're in Bangkok try the chicken from https://www.instagram.com/phonjaroen/ behind the Thai boxing stadium.

For those in Dallas, TX I suggest Babe's Chicken or Bubba's (same owner).

They always say you've moved to New Orleans when you stop at Popeye's on the way home after getting $250 worth of groceries

Oh man now I want to get Popeyes for lunch. I swear they put some sort of drug in their red beans and rice, I just can’t get enough of that with some spicy chicken!

Definitely try Popeyes if you get the chance, we’ve got them all the way up here in Kansas City, so I’m not sure how wide their range is.

One time I was driving back from Boulder to New Orleans. I think this was somewhere on US-84 in Texas or I-25 in Colorado (I think the latter). My fan had conked out (my AC had quit on the leg in). After a few hundred miles of driving with the window down I saw Popeyes on the blue sign at the next exit and pulled off at the exit. The moment I turned left to cross the overpass and laid eyes on the Popeyes sign on the other side of the Interstate my fan croaked back to life. I call it Al Copeland's miracle.

What do people think of KFC's fried chicken in the US?

Personally, it's trash chicken that's usually poorly fried that comes with awful sides, with the best spice blend of any chicken I have ever had that wasn't coated in a sauce. The corporate suits have found a way to basically destroy the product by doing everything as cheaply as possible yet there is still a glimmer of what must have been an amazing product.

It taste better in other countries but not because they do a better job replicating the original, but because it just taste like a completely different chicken place with the same logo. It's like getting Fanta in a different country.

Oh neat, thanks for the heads up, the next time I travel out of the country I’ll have to make a point of trying KFCs to taste the difference.

I think KFC provides a baseline for other chicken restaurants though, like a “your chicken must be at least this good to have a chicken restaurant”. You have to get your MVP (Minimum Viable Poultry).

It was one of the delights of my childhood many decades ago. I've tried it twice in the last decade, and both times, I literally (not figuratively) threw up both times because of how disgusting it made me feel. I'll never have it again. I presumed that they must changed the recipe in some misguided attempt to cut costs, but I never really looked into it.

KFC is pretty good. Lately though if I want chicken I end up getting Popeyes (more Cajun), China’s-Fil-A (juicier, tastes marinated, the flavor seems to permeate better on their chicken strips), or Cain’s Chicken (you can buy 25 chicken strips for $27 and feed an army, not quite as good as Chuck-Fil-A.

If I’m feeling nostalgic I’ll get KFC sometimes, it’s not bad just the sides taste very fake. Like I can get mashed potatoes from a bag at Costco that taste better than their mashed potatoes.

Although the last time I tried to get KFC they were “out of chicken”. That was bizarre.

> To keep her family from starving, Annie began selling ham and veal sandwiches for a few pennies to miners passing the front of her house.

It seems like an editor at the BBC missed something here. This should have probably read "To keep her family from destitution" - if they had ham and veal to sell, they presumably had it to eat themselves.

It’s not the clearest phrasing, but I don’t see anything wrong with it. By selling the sandwiches Annie could buy raw materials to make more sandwiches. A portion of the supply order was allocated to feed the family, the rest became the next batch of sandwiches to sell.

If she had not been able to generate a sustainable income she would not have been able to keep her family fed.

It could be a sustainability thing:

If you butcher an animal, you have X lbs of meat now. Maybe you don’t need all of that immediately just to survive.

If you only need Y < X to feed yourself, you can sell the excess and buy a new animal plus food to fatten it up.

This converts a onetime benefit (killing an animal you have now) into a sustainable way to provide for yourself.

That explanation makes sense, but the author's phrasing still seems clumsy to me.

I don’t think she had a big supply of ham and veal. She used the profit to feed the family. Is that not obvious?

Its a peculiarity of the traditional British media that they need to constantly portray rural business owners (particularly farmers) as fighting extreme poverty. Not entirely sure why this should be so, just that it is.

Presumably they were buying the meat at one price, applying a markup, and selling, hence making money to buy food. It was likely not coming off the Magic Veal Tree.

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