The 35 Best Fried Chicken Places in America

With four locations in Charleston and vicinity (like this one in Charleston’s West Ashley neighborhood) and one in Chicago, Boxcar Betty’s is a fried chicken sandwich specialist. There are three variations — the Boxcar (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). Grilled chicken or a pimiento-stuffed portobello mushroom cap may be substituted for the fried chicken breast.

Bruxie started out in 2010, in California’s Orange County, as a stand selling fried chicken sandwiches served on crisp waffles instead of rolls. There are now six locations in California and two in Seoul, Korea — plus this well-loved outpost in Las Vegas. In addition to the signature item (available in four variations), there are two fried chicken sandwiches on buns and tenders-and-fries combinations that are offered with a choice of seven sauces — among them housemade ranch, chili honey, and “angry” cheese sauce.

Champy’s has grown from this original location near the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga, opened in 2009, to an eight-unit chain (three in Tennessee, four in Alabama, one in Georgia). 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.

Frequent competition cooking show participant — and one-time winner of Bravo’s “Top Chef All-Stars” — Richard Blais opened this fried chicken restaurant in San Diego’s Little Italy in 2015, and it has since expanded into six locations (five in Southern California, one in Las Vegas). The menu includes classic fried chicken with a choice of sauces, as well as seven chicken sandwiches, in four of which the chicken is fried.

This Nashville hot chicken place in the southeastern Los Angeles County city of Downey (famous in fast-food history as the home of the oldest operating McDonald’s in the world, opened in 1953) focuses on fried tenders and wings. Both are available in five spice levels, from “Country (no heat)” to “BURRRN, baby burn.” About the restaurant’s unusual name: “crimson” is a reference to the reddish color of the fried chicken; and a chicken, of course, is a coward.