MILLIANS: Winner winner chicken dinner

Published 8:21 am Monday, November 4, 2024

The First Methodist Church is holding its Harvest Hullabaloo this weekend. The church will provide the fried chicken; members bring the sides.

What did the First Baptist Church serve at its annual Heritage Day lunch? Fried chicken, of course.

What’s a dinner on the grounds without fried chicken?

I’m not sure where all that fried chicken comes from. Kroger? Publix? Piggly Wiggly? Ms. Stella’s? Shrimp Boat? Mama J’s? It always tastes good.

I’ve been hooked on fried chicken — even when I didn’t live in the South — for as long as I can remember.

My late mom would get up and fry chicken for tailgates before Georgia football games. We’d have fried chicken, pimento cheese sandwiches, chips and date nut bread spread with cream cheese. Always the same menu.

Apparently, I am not alone in my quest for fried chicken (or fried chicken finger) perfection.

KFC has come out with original recipe chicken tenders. (It’ll always be Kentucky Fried Chicken to me. I’ve been to mecca just off I-75 in Corbin, Kentucky, where Colonel Harland Sanders started selling his 11 herbs and spices fried chicken from his roadside restaurant.)

Did you see the full-page KFC advertisement?  KFC takes dead aim at the competition. “This might just ruffle a few feathers. We’ve tried your chicken tenders and your dipping sauces. All your tenders taste the same . . . Let the chicken tender battle begin.”

I tried ‘em. They must have triple-dipped their tenders in those 11 herbs and spices. They were way too strong.

But at least it’s another option, considering that we lost Popeye’s tenders.

You remember a while back I said Milledgeville should be the “Chicken Finger Capital of the World.” I mentioned Zaxby’s, Huey Magoo’s, Chick-fil-A, Bojangles – and I was just getting warmed up.

Well, as it turns out, Manchester, New Hampshire, beat us to the punch.

According to the New York Times, just last year the city of Manchester issued a proclamation declaring itself the “Chicken Tender Capital of the World.”

Manchester claimed that the fried chicken tender as we know it was invented in 1974 at Puritan’s Backroom, a restaurant behind a candy store called Puritan.

But hold on a second. Right here in Georgia, Spanky’s on River Street in Savannah claims to be the “Home of the Original Chicken Finger.”

In fact, no less than the U.S. Congress recognizes Spanky’s with that distinction, thanks to the Honorable Earl L. “Buddy” Carter.

The proclamation read in part: “. . . The first chicken finger had landed, and Spanky’s would never be the same. For it was there, in the heart of River Street, that the chicken finger was born– a testament to the magic that can happen when hunger meets ingenuity, and a bite-sized piece of finger-licking history.”

OK, so they borrowed that “finger-licking” from Colonel Sanders.

But you get the picture. People are serious about their fried chicken.

The Hallmark Channel even has a show called “The Chicken Sisters,” which features dueling fried chicken restaurants. It was inspired by the fried chicken restaurants in the Kansas towns where author KJ Dell’Antonia’s parents grew up.

For the record, in real life the restaurants are Chicken Annie’s and Chicken Mary’s in Pittsburg, Kansas, if you are ever in the that neck of the woods.

Or, take Barberton, Ohio, a town just south of Cleveland. Barberton bills itself as the “Fried Chicken Capital of America.”

It’s got dueling fried chicken restaurants called Belgrade Gardens and White House Chicken, which both feature Serbian-style chicken.

I have eaten at Belgrade Gardens, but I’m not a fan. The chicken batter is sort of like Shake N Bake. Mushy and tasteless, if you ask me. But they do a ton of business. Different tastes for different folks.

The recent fried chicken phenomenon is hot chicken, made famous in Nashville. You can get it in Atlanta at Hattie B’s, Gus’s or Scoville’s.

I like it. Not the hot, hot. But more like the wimpy hot.

My most recent favorites are two places in Macon: The Bear’s Den for fried chicken and Jeneane’s at Pinebrook for chicken tenders.

Onlyinyourstate.com says the Bear’s Den is one of the top restaurants for fried chicken in Georgia: “Voted the best fried chicken in Macon, you need to visit The Bear’s Den if you’re looking to feast. The skin is thick and crispy, but the meat is so tender and juicy. There’s no doubt that once you eat this fried chicken, you’ll come back for more.”

You can’t beat chicken done right. (Oops, I think KFC came up with that one first, too.)

Rick Millians, a 1970 Baldwin High grad, is retired after working at newspapers in Georgia, Ohio and South Carolina. Reach him at rdmillians@aol.com