Livermore neighborhood restaurant enchants with airy decor and modern Californian cuisine. If you’re looking for more dish-centric top lists, check out my rosters of the Bay Area’s best burgers, burritos and sandwiches. I quickly realized that it’s not a binary: You’ll likely find both at most of the places on the list. After doing my research, it was clear that fried chicken is one of the great platform foods, capable of donning the customs and flavors of cultures all around the world.įor this list, I contemplated whether to keep it to sandwich-centric spots or places where you can get traditional meals made up of pieces of fried chicken. It appeared on menus at soul food restaurants, Cambodian shops and French bistros. It was glazed with spiced butter, mango sauce, garlic and soy sauce, and hot pepper jelly. Chicken was stuffed into sandwiches, served atop salads, pulled out of steam tables and presented on waffles. Nashville’s hot chicken is obviously a huge influence on the Bay Area’s fried chicken scene, but there’s way more to it. In service of putting together this list, which stretches from Wine Country to Oakland’s Fruitvale to the breweries of San Jose, I tried seemingly endless styles of the dish. Fried chicken is an icon that needs no introduction, but let me give it a shot.
