The Secret South

Chicken Joints
Can you smell what’s cooking? We thought so

Gullah Cuisine
Mount Pleasant, SC
It is a small shame that chef Charlotte Jenkins’s uptown-meets-Lowcountry shrine to Sea Islands cookery is perched, not alongside a tidal marsh at the end of an unmarked dirt lane shaded by brooding live oaks, but next to four lanes of blurring U.S. 17 traffic. But once your chicken arrives at table—moist, greaseless, and so exquisitely tasty your dining companions will probably start robbing your plate—all is forgiven. (gullahcuisine.com)

Keaton’s Barbecue
Cleveland, NC
The real McCoy: conveniently on the way to absolutely nowhere, a nearly half-century-long track record of goading customers into making the pilgrimage anyway, and a unique twist on the standard recipe that makes a convincing bid for poultry immortality. Following the lead of the late Mr. B. W. Keaton, the kitchen staff still fries the chicken until slightly crisp, then baptizes it in a boiling vat of the house barbecue sauce. Order at the counter, then once your number gets called, peel back the waxed paper from your plate and take a bite of the Old South. (keatonsoriginalbbq.com)

Po Po Family Restaurant
Boerne, TX
There’s something unmistakably Texan about a restaurant that proclaims the word EATS in red neon right over the front door—cuts right to the chase. Po Po also proudly displays a memorable collection of two thousand-plus souvenir plates all over its walls. But this welcoming Hill Country stalwart, in a stone edifice off I-10 outside San Antonio, proffers more than roadside kitsch. Any establishment that has been dishing up chicken dinners since the Depression has surely nailed down the formula. (poporestaurant.com)

Seafood & Chicken Box
Trussville, AL
You can’t exactly call it fast food, because the chicken is cooked to order and takes a good twenty five minutes of waiting. You can’t call it glamorous, because nothing in a Kmart strip mall is. You certainly can’t call it pretentious—the Gagliano family unapologetically call their signature combination of spices “goo.” What you can call it is a family-owned eatery that for almost forty years has been serving up made-from-scratch goodness to generations of Birminghamers. (seafoodandchickenbox.com)

The Swanson
Perry, GA
Open less than a decade, but you’d swear it’s been serving after-church meat-and-three plates since hometown lad Sam Nunn was in short pants. In a historic gingerbread cottage with tables draped in white cloths—so you can eat a drumstick with your fingers but raise a pinkie. Roughly midway between Atlanta and Valdosta, the Swanson is well worth a short detour to escape the seventh circle of franchise hell known as Interstate 75. (theswanson.com)

Tupelo Honey Café
Asheville, NC
Think of Tupelo Honey as a microcosm of Asheville: one part Southern, one part earth-crunch, one part batty. So the fried chicken here is free-range, of course, and shows up dressed in a crust of mixed nuts in lieu of breading, with a side of mashed sweet potatoes. You can also order your bird in the form of a stroke of brilliance that ought to be a first-ballot shoo-in as soon as someone opens a Comfort Food Hall of Fame: the fried chicken BLT. (tupelohoneycafe.com)

Wayside Takeout
Charlottesville, VA
“Supremely crunchy on the outside, slightly spicy,” gushes one reader, “it’s nothing short of amazing.” Not to mention nostalgically cheap. Little wonder that Wayside’s plain-Jane blue-and-white headquarters has been a regular stop for loyal locals (and homesick UVA undergrads) since the Nixon administration. Last year, after then-Cavalier men’s basketball coach Dave Leitao capped a losing season by bowing out in the first round of the ACC tournament, he stopped by Wayside—perhaps sensing that his days in Charlottesville were numbered—got in line, and ordered a 20-pack of chicken to go. (waysidechicken.com)

Willie Mae’s Scotch House
New Orleans, LA
It’s worth noting that every reader who endorsed Willie Mae’s inserted an exclamation point at the end, as if that were an official part of the restaurant’s name. But those who have eaten at this Tremé institution understand. The dramatic arc of its post-Katrina, volunteer-funded and -renovated rise from the wreckage and 2007 reopening has become a parable of Crescent City renewal, with ninety four-year-old Willie Mae Seaton having passed the torch to her great-granddaughter Kerry, the sole heir to the secret wet-batter, lightly floured chicken recipe. (504-822-9503)
 

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