Atlanta’s best fried chicken? It’s a tie
Who has the best fried chicken in Atlanta? We started with 12 semifinalists, asked Atlanta to help us narrow the field and brought the reader favorites to The Atlanta Journal-Constitution’s offices for a blind taste test with local food experts and journalists.
We cast a wide net because Atlanta’s love of fried chicken isn’t limited to the iconic Southern style. Our contenders included Korean, Thai and Peruvian fried chicken alongside soul food institutions, Southern restaurants and Publix. Yes, Publix. Leaving it out of a fried chicken conversation felt ... dishonest.
Five restaurants survived the reader vote, and five chickens were ordered. But only four chickens made it to the judging table. We’ll get to that in a minute.
How did we choose Atlanta’s best fried chicken?
We built our original list using restaurant reviews, reader recommendations and our own experience eating around Atlanta. Because our taste tests happen during business hours at the AJC’s Midtown office, restaurants also had to be open during our tasting window and available for pickup or delivery inside the Perimeter.
Our 12 semifinalists were bb.q Chicken, Buttermilk Kitchen, CM Chicken, Harold’s Chicken & Ice Bar, K & K Soul Food, Las Brasas, Mary Mac’s Tea Room, Pelicana Chicken, Pink Lotus Thai Restaurant, Publix, South City Kitchen and The Busy Bee.
Then we put the list on Instagram and asked readers to vote. They chose bb.q Chicken, Pelicana Chicken, Pink Lotus Thai Restaurant, Publix and The Busy Bee for the final round.
It was a wonderfully weird final five, and we couldn’t have been happier about it. Chicken can cross more than one type of road on its way to crispy perfection. For our taste test, we had Southern, Korean and Thai styles.
What’s the difference between Korean, Thai and Southern fried chicken?
Southern fried chicken typically gets its substantial, craggy crust from seasoned wheat flour, often after the chicken has been marinated in buttermilk. That combination of moisture and flour creates a hefty crust of irregular ridges, flakes and crunchy bits that are hallmarks of the style.
Korean fried chicken takes a different approach with a much thinner coating, often a combination of potato or corn starch combined with rice flour. Double-frying is common, which creates an exceptionally thin, brittle shell that stays ridiculously crispy for long periods of time.
Thai fried chicken puts more emphasis on seasoning the meat itself. Chicken may be marinated with fish sauce, garlic, coriander, white pepper and other aromatics before frying. Our Pink Lotus fried chicken is made in the Hat Yai style of southern Thailand, which has a crust topped with crispy fried shallots.
What makes great fried chicken?
We gave our judges five things to consider: crust, meat, seasoning, balance and the second-bite test. Was the crust crisp, well-seasoned and attached to the chicken? Was the meat juicy, tender and properly cooked? Did the seasoning make it past the breading and into the meat? Was the whole thing flavorful without being too salty, greasy or heavy?
Then came the second-bite test: Which chicken do you immediately want to taste again?
You can discuss crust, moisture and seasoning all you want, but automatically going in for another bite is the biggest tell of all.
Our judges included AJC journalists and local food experts, including two members of our ATL50 expert panel: food journalist Daniela Cintron and Justin Brown, the prolific Atlanta diner behind @therealfoodstalker.
Can you really blind-taste Publix fried chicken?
We removed the chicken from its original packaging and assigned each restaurant a number. In theory, nobody knew what they were eating.
Then people started tasting the Publix chicken.
Several of our tasters picked it out almost immediately.
“I know this chicken” became something of a refrain. They recognized the familiar crust and flavor before anyone revealed the name. How’s that for brand recognition?
But maybe it shouldn’t be surprising. Publix fried chicken has become its own Southern food ritual. It’s the chicken that shows up at tailgates and picnics, gets picked up on the way to the lake and rescues dinner when nobody wants to cook. For plenty of people, the taste is tied to a whole catalog of places and occasions that have nothing to do with sitting down in a restaurant.
What happened to our Busy Bee fried chicken?
Food & Dining critic Henri Hollis picked up the Publix order. The other four finalists were ordered for delivery, with explicit instructions for the delivery people to bring the food inside our building and leave it at the security desk. The other drivers called when they arrived, came inside, handed us the chicken and took photos of the exchange.
Then my phone said The Busy Bee had been delivered.
The delivery photo showed a random patch of sidewalk somewhere outside our office park, but the chicken was suspiciously absent from the picture.
It only took us a few minutes to figure out where the photo had been taken, but when we arrived, there was nothing there. We called the driver. No answer. We texted. No response. Why would a delivery driver not take photos of the chicken at its “drop-off spot” and then not respond to calls and texts?
Make of that what you will.
In the AJC kitchen, we had a camera crew ready to shoot, judges waiting to eat and nearly $500 worth of fried chicken steadily getting colder. Ordering another round from The Busy Bee would have taken close to an hour. We had to start.
Who has the best fried chicken in Atlanta?
What we began referring to as “The Busy Bee heist” left bb.q Chicken, Pelicana Chicken, Pink Lotus Thai Restaurant and Publix as our contenders. Our judges tasted the four side by side and voted for their favorite.
Fifteen people blind tasted the chicken, and somehow we ended up with a tie.
Publix and Pelicana Chicken each received five votes, making them the co-winners of the AJC’s search for the best fried chicken in Atlanta. Pink Lotus finished just one vote behind with four people naming it superior. Our last finalist, bb.q Chicken, received just one vote.
The two winners couldn’t be more different. Pelicana is Korean fried chicken, with a thin, lightly seasoned crust built for a crunch that lasts. Publix serves the familiar Southern style, with a thicker, craggier coating and a deep flavor so recognizable that we couldn’t disguise it by taking it out of the box.
The crispy fried shallot-topped Pink Lotus Hat Yai chicken might have been the most interesting result, finishing just one vote behind the leaders. A Korean fried chicken restaurant, a Thai restaurant and a Southern-style grocery-store deli were separated by a single vote.
That’s Atlanta.
As for the chicken from The Busy Bee Cafe, we’ll never know whether it would have changed the results. But getting bird-napped before even making it to the taste test feels like an endorsement of its own.