The Best Fried Chicken Places in America

This, the original location of this 10-location Texas chain, in the Dallas-Fort Worth area city of Roanoke, gets high marks for its classic fried chicken (and also chicken-fried steak). An added attraction at Babe’s is the selection of homemade pies.

The small menu at this Portland favorite includes a hot chicken plate that comes with the warning: “This is legitimately spicy. No returns or exchange;” a “legendary” fried chicken sandwich; and a fried chicken salad that includes avocado, a soft-boiled egg, and ginger-and-garlic-marinated wheat noodles. Basilisk is currently open for online orders only, and masks are required for order pickup.

The Bird describes itself as “the ultimate fried chicken sandwich shop,” serving “indulgent food that’s made with integrity and sold for just 8 bucks.” They use free-range fowl, coated with berbere (the traditional Ethiopian spice blend); the buns are fresh-baked locally every morning; and the sandwich includes crunchy house-made apple slaw. Hot wings are also served after 3 p.m. daily, and fried chicken may be added to the house salad. As of early November, The Bird has been open for takeout, delivery, and outdoor dining.

Birdies is about two things: fried chicken and doughnuts (not together). The chicken, free-range, comes as wings, in various combinations of pieces, as sandwiches (breakfast and otherwise), and as tenders, with sauces including house ranch and ghost chile mayo. (The doughnuts, for those who want to end their chicken feast with something sweet, come in such flavors as lemon thyme pistachio and candied bacon maple.)

With three locations in South Carolina (like this one in Charleston’s West Ashley neighborhood), Boxcar Betty’s is a chicken sandwich specialist, offering both grilled and fried fowl in three variations — the Boxcar (with pimiento cheese, peach slaw, house pickles, spicy mayo), the Chicken “Not So Waffle” (bacon jam, maple syrup, pimiento cheese, tomato), and the Buffalo (blue cheese sauce, tomato, bibb lettuce).

Champy’s has grown from this original location near the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga, opened in 2009, to an eight-unit chain (four in Tennessee, four in Alabama). The specialty is straightforward Mississippi Delta-style fried chicken, served with baked beans and slaw. Hot tamales, a non-chicken Delta specialty seldom seen elsewhere in the South, are available as a starter.

“Our famous home-style chicken” is the specialty here. The menu offers two-, three-, and four-piece assortments of what a fan from nearby Topeka called “finger-licking must-have fried chicken” on Yelp. Chicken dinners include potatoes, salad, bread, and coffee or tea. The website KansasTravel notes that Chicken House “is the kind of place where diners converse across the dining room, most of the men wear hats.”

This Korean-style fried chicken place sells oversize chicken wings, as well as drumsticks, thighs, boneless breast strips, and a plant-based chicken alternative. Sauces include Thai chili and soy garlic, and among the sides are Korean noodle soup and pork belly kimchi fries. There is a second location in Carlsbad, California, north of San Diego.

A strong entry on the Southern California hot chicken scene, Dave’s has six locations up and running (the East Hollywood restaurant gets the nod here) and five more in the works. Tenders and fried chicken sliders are the offerings, and there are seven grades of seasoning available, from “no spice” to “reaper” (presumably a reference to the Carolina Reaper, very likely the world’s hottest chile).

Napoleon “Na” Vanderbilt and his wife, Maggie, started selling fried chicken out the back door of a tavern in Mason, Tennessee, northeast of Memphis, in 1953. They opened a restaurant in the community 20 years later. Na’s son Vernon “Gus” Bonner inherited the place and renamed it for himself, and in 2001, with his blessing, a longtime customer of Bonner’s launched this Memphis offshoot, now one of two in the city. The Mason establishment is still in business, but there are a total of 30 locations around the country, from New Orleans to Chicago to L.A. Chicken plates include baked beans, slaw, and white bread.

Hattie B’s offers counter-service fried chicken at three locations in the town where the hot chicken craze started — Nashville — plus one each in Memphis; Atlanta; Las Vegas; and Birmingham, Alabama. Heat levels here range from “Southern (no heat)” to “Shut the cluck up!!! (burn notice).” The Midtown/Broadway location in Nashville gets the most praise from Yelpers.

The menu here — currently available for pickup and delivery only — offers humanely raised fried chicken, served boneless (except for the drumsticks), with corn muffins and honey butter on the side. Eight house-made dipping sauces are available, including blue cheese and candied jalapeño mayo. There are also four variations on the chicken sandwich theme.

Like so many other proprietors of hot chicken places, the owners of this four-unit mini-chain (three in Columbus, one near Cleveland) fell in love with the preparation in Nashville and brought the idea home with them. Their location in the North Market food hall is a customer favorite. Chicken in various forms (as well as seitan “not chicken”) is available four ways, from “Cold (hot in temperature, cool in spice)” to “Holy (#&@*%?!).”

This small counter-service Nashville-style hot chicken joint in L.A.’s Chinatown, which started life as a food truck, sells whole-bird fried chicken, wings, and boneless breast sandwiches in six degrees of heat, from “Country (no heat)” to “Howlin’ (can’t touch this).” The hot chicken and waffles dish is available on weekends.

Fried chicken with fries and slaw, fried chicken sandwiches on a French roll or “gourmet bun,” a chopped chicken bowl, and battered and fried pickle spears are on the menu at this operation, opened in the fall of 2018 in the San Fernando Valley community of Sherman Oaks. There is a second location in West Hollywood.

The Flushing (Queens) location of this Korean fried chicken place opened in 2006 (there are now two other Queens locations and one in Brooklyn). Wings, drumsticks, and boneless breasts are offered, with soy garlic or spicy garlic sauce. There are also Buffalo wings and scallion chicken, described as “deep-fried boneless breast with scallion, red onion, and sweet mustard sauce.”

What the Dallas Observer called “the crispiest, juiciest Dallas fried chicken” comes from an eatery at one end of a laundromat. Both operations are owned by Tram and Son Dao, a Vietnamese couple who immigrated to the U.S. in the 1990s. The point here is good fried chicken, not heat — but all the various chicken parts are available spicy if desired.

According to the website NatchezTraceTravel, “People travel for hours to partake of {the} ‘Heavenly Fried Chicken'” at this rustic establishment northeast of Natchez, originally opened as, yes, a country store in 1875. The chicken is the star of the all-you-can-eat buffet, served daily from 10 a.m. to early evening. TV food personality Alton Brown has visited, and he says that the only fried chicken he’ll eat is his own or the one served here.

“We’re a small mom & pop shop with a very big dream,” announces the Peck Peck website. The wings are an assortment of wingettes and drumettes, and there are also drumstick combos (which adds legs to the wings), chicken tenders, and two chicken salads. The chicken comes in three flavors: salt and pepper, soy garlic, and sweet and spicy.

Paying “homage to ‘Nashville style’ hot chicken and southern soul food” (according to its website) Rocky’s serves various chicken combinations in eight degrees of heat, from plain to extra hot. Wings and chicken and waffles are also on the menu, as are grilled and rotisserie chicken and chicken pot pie. There is a second location in Arden, just south of Asheville, and an offshoot in Greenville, South Carolina, is in the works. Rocky’s is currently open only for pickup and delivery.

The soul-food combination of chicken and waffles is said to have been invented at Wells Supper Club in Harlem in the late 1930s. Harlem native Herb Hudson brought the concept to L.A. in 1975 (there are now eight Southern California locations). Not all the offerings involve waffles, by any means (the Oscar, for instance, is three chicken wings, grits, one egg, and a biscuit), but chicken and waffles is definitely what President Obama had when he visited Roscoe’s in 2011.

Fried chicken tenders (either as a plate or in taco form), two sandwiches (fried chicken and fried chicken salad), and chicken-tender-enriched kale salad and mac & cheese are the fare served here. Spice levels stretch from no-heat Classic Fried to Gonzo. There’s a second Royals in Louisville besides this Market Street location, as well as one in suburban Jeffersontown, Kentucky.

With two Dallas locations (the Cedar Springs outlet gets the nod here), Street’s cooks their French-fried chicken to order (it’ll take 20 minutes to 30 minutes, warns the menu). Also on offer: fried chicken sandwiches, crispy tenders, and chicken “lollipops” (smoked and fried drumsticks) — as well as chicken roasted with herbes de Provence or marinated peri peri style (a spicy Portuguese preparation).

Japanese-style fried chicken dinners — chicken rice, house-pickled ginger cabbage, and both sweet and spicy ponzu sauce are included — are the draw here. Unusual side dishes include crispy fried chicken skin, curry creamed corn, and soy-glazed yams, and there are both L.A.-area and Japanese craft beers to wash it all down with.

This industrial-look Koreatown restaurant, hidden behind a pizza parlor, has vinyl records on the walls and a DJ booth — but patrons won’t experience the interior right now as the restaurant is open only for takeout and delivery. Fried wings, drumsticks, boneless breasts, and combinations, with soy garlic or hot and spicy sauce (or half and half) are the feature.

This casual counter-service restaurant is all about the wings, available bone-in or boneless. The numerous variations include 13 different dry coatings (Caribbean jerk, garlic parmesan, even funnel cake batter with powdered sugar) and 22 wet sauces (spicy curry, Buffalo ranch, honey chile lime, sweet mustard…). Fries are available plain, topped with Philly cheesesteak, or tossed in any one of the wing sauces.

After opening pop-ups in Maryland and Virginia in 2018, Wooboi set up this permanent shop last year just outside D.C. Tenders, wings, and breast are on the menu, and there’s a chicken and waffles combo, too. Six heat levels are available; the hottest, Code Red and Code Blue, require diners to sign a chalkboard “waiver” — part of which reads “I do not have a medical condition that could jeopardize my health or well being during or after eating Wooboi hot chicken.” A second location has just opened in Alexandria, Virginia.