A couple of months ago I was complaining about the scarcity of quality fried chicken around me and a buddy suggested going in to the city and doing a fried chicken crawl. Since we made plans a Popeyes has opened here, so there is now the possibility of engaging in a regular and glorious fried chicken repast locally. However, we did proceed with the fried chicken crawl in Manhattan yesterday. It was a beautiful day, and we were able to identify 5 places on the lower east side-ish that would allow us to walk from one to the next, and also bring some wine/bubbly.

First up was Bobwhite Counter. Really juicy and crispy bird. It was a little underseasoned to my taste, but it was very good and had a beautiful color. I was impressed with how crispy it was given that it had very little breading on it. The sides were also pretty good but not outstanding. Collard greens were good, but could have used a little more acid. This was the only place that had collards on the menu, which kind of surprised me. Biscuit was large, thin and square, probably the weakest of the day. Mac and cheese was very good.

Next was Root & Bone. This is a pretty trendy place and has received a lot of positive press. They brine the chicken in sweet tea, then dehydrate lemon, crush it, and coat the chicken with it before battering and frying. Presentation at this place was the best, and this place is probably the best restaurant of all the places we visited. I thought the chicken was good, not great. It was crispy but I didn't notice any obvious benefit from the tea or the lemon. The white meat was kind of dry, the dark was really good. The biscuit was also really good. Smaller, but just enough, served with some kind of chicken jus (I wasn't paying attention when it was explained what it was because I was looking at the chef, an Aussie woman who is kind of hot, industry adjusted, who was talking with one of my friends). We had mac and cheese here as a side and it was pretty good.

Next up was Blue Ribbon Fried chicken. This is the latest stand alone effort from the Bromberg Bros and it's a bit different from the other places here in that it's really more of a fast food type set up relative to the others. You order at a counter, get your food and sit down with self service soft drinks, etc. Relative to the other places, it was ok, but relative to most fast food fried chicken places it's very good. The differentiator for Blue Ribbon is they put matzo meal in the breading, which gives it a little extra crisp. I've made the recipe from their cookbook and I didn't see a big difference between that and what I got at their restaurant. They did put an assload of paprika on the bird in the restaurant, which gives it a nice color, but I thought it was a bit much. I don't even remember trying the sides here.

PIes & Thighs was next and I was excited about this one because it also seems to get a lot of positive press. We went to the Manhattan outpost of this place, the original is I think in Brooklyn. It was extremely disappointing and by far the weakest place we visited. The chicken was blonde in color relative to the rest, it was dry, and it wasn't seasoned well at all. I thought it sucked. One thing that was great was a black eyed pea salad, which was served cold, and had great flavor with some zingy acidity and a nice kick of pepper.

Final chicken place was Sweet Chick. They generally serve chicken and waffles, but we were able to persuade them to just serve us eight pieces of chicken. The chicken was really good. Crackly and substantial but not too much breading, good seasoning with just a hint of pepper, and nice juiciness. Biscuits were huge, and I don't think we had any sides because we were all about at capacity at this point.

Sweet Chick/Root and Bone were probably neck and neck consensus favorites. I preferred Bobwhite Counter, but was in the minority. Blue Ribbon is fine if you want fast food type chicken, and everybody thought Pies & Thighs sucked.

After all this we went to DBGB and watched the Masters, drank some wine, and saw Doug from House of Cards. Then we went to Pearl and Ash, met the spouses so they could eat, and drank some more. My liver is at capacity.