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Fried Chicken


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15 hours ago, DonRocks said:

I hadn't been to El Pollo Campero in years, but the South Arlington location has some of the best fried chicken I've ever eaten. Get an 8-piece pack with 2 sides, and make those the Campero Beans and Campero Rice. Get dinner rolls instead of tortillas. $19.99 and you'll feel like you stole it.

Very interesting!   I drive by one of these joints on Rt. 1 every day on my way to work and have never given it a second thought.  To me it was just another one of the hundred uninteresting chain restaurants on Rt. 1 south of the beltway.  The price seems lot better than KFC or Popeye's too.

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My far-out neighborhood of South Riding in Loudoun County (Chantilly 20152) is about to become fried chicken central. For years our only option has been the Southern Style chicken biscuit at McDs. We got a Velocity Wings but it's pretty bad. But in the next year or so we are getting a Chik-Fil-A, a Royal Farms, and a Bon Chon!

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43 minutes ago, Bart said:

Very interesting!   I drive by one of these joints on Rt. 1 every day on my way to work and have never given it a second thought.  To me it was just another one of the hundred uninteresting chain restaurants on Rt. 1 south of the beltway.  The price seems lot better than KFC or Popeye's too.

Pollo Campero is the pride of Guatemala.  Nevertheless, people claim the chicken is better from the motherland.  Thus people are apt to bring buckets of chicken on their way back to the U.S. from Guatemala.  I personally enjoyed their chicken here and there, and I would eat them anywhere.  But I don't know whether they have THE best fried chicken.  I've never had any fried chicken so amazing that it was THE best fried chicken (and I suspect I never will).

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10 hours ago, Ericandblueboy said:

I've never had any fried chicken so amazing that it was THE best fried chicken (and I suspect I never will).

Once upon a time....

I waited tables at a place called Hazel's, on Columbia Road. (Now Habana Village.) Jazz, southern food, really really really good fried chicken. Especially on Sundays, when the special was honey fried chicken. (The regular fried chicken dipped into boiling honey. Very tasty indeed.)

Although, as horrid as I found the service there, Colorado Kitchen also had some amazing fried chicken.

Those were THE best fried chicken I have ever had.

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43 minutes ago, saf said:

Once upon a time....

I waited tables at a place called Hazel's, on Columbia Road. (Now Habana Village.) Jazz, southern food, really really really good fried chicken. Especially on Sundays, when the special was honey fried chicken. (The regular fried chicken dipped into boiling honey. Very tasty indeed.)

Although, as horrid as I found the service there, Colorado Kitchen also had some amazing fried chicken.

Those were THE best fried chicken I have ever had.

Colorado Kitchen and its successor whose name can't recall were the last places I went out of the way to get their fried chicken. 

 

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13 hours ago, Ericandblueboy said:

Pollo Campero is the pride of Guatemala.  Nevertheless, people claim the chicken is better from the motherland.  Thus people are apt to bring buckets of chicken on their way back to the U.S. from Guatemala.  I personally enjoyed their chicken here and there, and I would eat them anywhere.  But I don't know whether they have THE best fried chicken.  I've never had any fried chicken so amazing that it was THE best fried chicken (and I suspect I never will).

Before I retired I spent decades literally driving around the U. S. for business; some trips were 4-5,000 miles or more and would take two weeks.  I used to reward myself for the many nights away from home by eating certain food on successive nights.  One year I did bbq, another frozen custard, another pizza, etc.

One year I focused on fried chicken sourcing a lot of places from Roadfood and from local magazines which had "best of" lists.  I don't remember the order but one year, in one week, I had Nashville's Prince's, Stroud's in Kansas City, the Brookville Hotel in Kansas, a converted chicken coop (serious) just west of Wichita whose name I can't remember,Sleep Hollow in Oklahoma City and two or three more places whose names escape me too but had legendary (or such) reputations (Oklahoma City, Dallas and Little Rock).  After a week of fried chicken I was sick of it.

I remember at the time thinking that the best fried chicken was that which was freshly made.  Grease made a difference, too.  Popeye's was better on days when the grease was freshly changed.  An especially crusty and aged cast iron skillet made a difference, too.  The chicken coop west of Wichita fried in cast iron skillets and one of these was suppose to be more than fifty years old and had never seen soap.  I went there four or five times and I swear that the chicken was better on some nights than others.

I also used to believe that Fluffo was better than Crisco.

FWIW when my mom passed away I inherited her black cast iron skillet.  This dates to sometime literally in the early 20th century from a relative of her's (and me).  It has never seen soap and has a crust.  Once she and I cooked pork chops in her skillet and one that I had which was several years old.

There was no comparison.  

Of course she didn't use Fluffo but that's another story.

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I haven't been to the AC&T in Hagerstown for some time now because of Corridor H, but the chicken in my mind is still my favorite fried chicken.  I find I enjoy fried chicken more when I am at an unpretentious location though, a small hometown restaurant, gas station or etc.

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10 minutes ago, ktmoomau said:

I haven't been to the AC&T in Hagerstown for some time now because of Corridor H, but the chicken in my mind is still my favorite fried chicken.  I find I enjoy fried chicken more when I am at an unpretentious location though, a small hometown restaurant, gas station or etc.

I still make it a point of going whenever I'm in that area at mealtime, and it's very good, but I don't think it's on par with what Tom Power, Gillian Clark, Antonio Burrell, etc. put out.

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8 minutes ago, DanielK said:

I still make it a point of going whenever I'm in that area at mealtime, and it's very good, but I don't think it's on par with what Tom Power, Gillian Clark, Antonio Burrell, etc. put out.

I think it's a personal thing.  Fried Chicken at a nice restaurant to me just never tastes as good, it just doesn't feel right to me.

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the last fried chicken I got from Giant was so awful that I threw it out and made a PBJ and was glad I did.  Overcooked, double-breaded, tasted only of salt and old grease, and was mostly backs that the amount of breading disguised them to look like thighs.  never again

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Willie Mae's Scotch House in New Orleans is probably the best fried chicken I've ever had.  They get a big lunch crowd and it's a very relaxed place.  Planning on going there again this June and I'm really looking forward to it.

 

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17 hours ago, Go for Gin said:

Willie Mae's Scotch House in New Orleans is probably the best fried chicken I've ever had.  They get a big lunch crowd and it's a very relaxed place.  Planning on going there again this June and I'm really looking forward to it.

 

I was just there a few months back, and thought it was really good, but not the best I'd ever had.

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Dooky Chase had serious fried chicken in the '80's but this is like Kansas City's "Chicken Betty" who Calvin Trillin made famous in an early '90's New Yorker piece.  She cooked at auto auctions sometime in the '80's and was legendary for her skillet fried chicken.  I read about her on, I believe, Roadfood and tried to track her down at this auction on an '80's trip.   She wasn't there that day but everyone I talked to told me how good her chicken was.

Sorely disappointed I reluctantly went to the original Stroud's which was my first visit there.  I knew Stroud's was suppose to be good but it was Chicken Betty whose legend I was chasing.

Stroud's (original was closed many years ago) was incredible.  I forgot all about Chicken Betty.  In fact the original Stroud's became something of a semi annual pilgramage for me until they closed their original in the early 2000's.  I never did find Chicken Betty but for me Stroud's and another place called Boots and Coates became the stuff of dreams.  And that converted chicken coop and its 50+ year 0ld crusty skillet just west of Wichita.

Buster Holmes in New Orleans was sort of like this:  on a visit in '80 or '81 I fell in love with it.  Plus the place had a lot of character.  But overtime I found other places to visit in NOLA substituting stops at Buster Holmes for stops at the line which backed up for a block on Chartres street for K Paul's in its first few years of operation.

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Here's a tip that sadly I have not been able to take advantage of for many years now. Eastern NC barbecue places like Parker's in Wilson have GREAT fried chicken. The family-style dinner at Parker's includes two pieces of chicken along with unlimited everything else.

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11 hours ago, Bob Wells said:

Here's a tip that sadly I have not been able to take advantage of for many years now. Eastern NC barbecue places like Parker's in Wilson have GREAT fried chicken. The family-style dinner at Parker's includes two pieces of chicken along with unlimited everything else.

The fried chicken at Parker's is excellent... arguably better than their bbq. 

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11 hours ago, stevem said:

Continuing the trend, Liberty BBQ has very good fried chicken.

Big fan of Liberty BBQ, especially their fried chicken. Had it when they had their Sunday Brunch, had it for lunch a few times.

My family loved it so much, Christmas Eve two years ago, we ordered it for family dinner.

It did NOT travel well at all. Everyone kind of looked at their plate, wondering what it was. 

Liberty Fried Chicken...eat at the restaurant. 

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13 hours ago, buzzy said:

Big fan of Liberty BBQ, especially their fried chicken. Had it when they had their Sunday Brunch, had it for lunch a few times.

My family loved it so much, Christmas Eve two years ago, we ordered it for family dinner.

It did NOT travel well at all. Everyone kind of looked at their plate, wondering what it was. 

Liberty Fried Chicken...eat at the restaurant. 

Or a two minute drive if you pick it up exactly when it’s ready. AKA get really lucky.

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Fryer’s Roadside will reopen on Thursday, Dec. 8 with a new menu from Chef Edward Reavis and Jennifer Meltzer, the team behind All Set Restaurant & Bar and Money Muscle BBQ, who bought the Silver Spring-based fried chicken and ice-cream stand in September 2022.

https://www.sourceofthespring.com/silver-spring-news/2800823/fryers-roadside-will-reopen-under-new-owners-dec-8/

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