I've been wanting to try Amy Ruth's for a while now.

I'll vote for two places in Brooklyn, NY.

The fried chicken and cheddar waffles at Buttermilk Channel is really yummy and Picket Fence makes outstanding fried chicken but no waffles :(

My first trip there was as a little kid. My mother loved that place, not so much for the chicken but for the rhubarb sauce and the boysenberry pie. I was there a couple of years ago and shuddered when I realized how many years ago I had been there the first time. There are probably not a lot of restaurants that, when one is of a certain age, have been open virtually one's entire life. :eek:

There is a book called ROAD FOOD that lists some very good ones. One place as I recall was touted as the best in the US and we went there and indeed the fried chicken was really phenomenal. Immensely better than Harold's in Chicago.

Can't recall where it was (Kentucky or Virginia, maybe?), but a quick look if you can find the book should suffice.

Worth getting that book in any case.

I think people get intimidated by the line, it looks long but the entryway is very shallow and that staff knows how to move a line and cycle diners through the joint. It is also surprisingly larger inside than it looks from the outside.

I hear you about there not being a lot of restaurants that have been open one's entire life. We chatted up the waitress a little bit, found out that she was the newbie on the bunch (and she was not that young of a woman either). She said that she had wanted to work there for a loooong time and had had to wait for an opening. She mentioned that some of the wait staff have been there going on 25 or 30 years.

Gus's World Famous Fried Chicken in Memphis, TN

+1 It was so good my wife gave up being a vegetarian for one night!

I still recall my reaction on my first and only visit, 1954, with 4 younger sisters ranging down to babe in arms. I was rising 14, a man of the world, but forced to travel in the 3rd row of the Ford "Country Sedan" (no fake wood trim, that reserved for the "Country Squire"), a long way from the under-dash FrigiKing AC, and charged with maintaining ice in the zinc ice chest and water in the canvas bag hung from the front bumper all the way from Central Texas across barely charted wastes.

The chicken was OK, but not up to my grandmother's. The boysenberry pie was to wallow in, but I don't really remember the rhubarb sauce. Of course, i don't think I had ever seen a rhubarb, much less the sauce therefrom. I do remember that the best meal (in Solveng, CA, a smorgasbord, where I became addicted to cold fruit soup) on the trip, a Great Circle from the Southern Desert to San Diego (friends - who owned a Morgan they let me drive - in what was briefly our wartime home up to SFO, then through Yosemite and Tioga Pass, Vegas (far fewer bright lights and people then, but motels), Kanab, Utah (drunken tribes fighting in the night time streets) and Santa Fe and ABQ (La Placita was a landmark in that lost era) on the way home.

Art smith's friend chicken is brined overnight and wonderfully juicy, but too costly to mae a top 10 simply due to that!

As for tenders, I like Bush's here a central texas chain, but chicken express is right there with them. For a pure fried chicken, Krispy Chicken just around the corner from my office here is Waco is among the best I've ever had, and it has lines that are a block long in their limited hours open. I go there maybe 2 times a year, but I pass by it almost daily, every time their open, they have 10+ people in line.

Another one of note, the Dan'l Boone Inn Restaurant in Boone, NC

Dinner is ham biscuits, fried chicken, mashed potatoes, salisbury steak, green beans, corn and fried apples with pie or cobbler for dessert. $16.95 a person buys you all you can eat, great atmosphere too. The chicken is quite delicious as one would expect from a place like that.

Miller's Home Cafe New Carlisle Indiana. Been in business over 50 years.

For my money, it is Babe's, in Roanoke, TX (Dallas 'burbs). Bring some friends, order a platter and some biscuits, drink some Dr. Pepper. Life is good!

I like the chinese szechuan spicy fried chicken.

When he’s in Charlotte, Wolfgang Puck can be seen at Price’s Chicken Coop (on Camden Road). He loves the chicken almost as much as I do. If you get there at lunch time be prepared to get in line -- which stretches out the door. (Even Wolfgang will queue for their chicken.) It’s a simple place with a simple menu. No seating -- It’s all TO GO, and it's delicious.

+1 ^^

As far as chains go, I also highly recommend GFC Guatemala Fried Chicken. Ok yeah the chain is technically called Pollo Campero but I really think it would have been much funnier if they called the place GFC.

And here in the DFW area at least the Pollo Campero staff all speak English.

For chain fried chicken it's quite good - plus the campero beans are a good side (their mashed potatoes are terrible, however). Yuca fries are also a good side!

The Pollo Campero in far North Dallas at Preston and the PGB closed recently. It's being remodeled and will be a Schlotzsky’s opening next week. Pollo Campero must vary from location to location because the one on Preston had very dry chicken.