We tasted fried chicken at all of Raleigh’s grocery stores. Here’s how we ranked them

Somewhere on the fried chicken spectrum between the fast food drive-thru and Sunday supper is the grocery store bucket, a treasure chest waiting under a heat lamp.

Every day at lunch and dinner, the major grocery stores in the Triangle pack up dozens of boxes, bags and buckets of fresh-from-the-fryer fried chicken. Some sits under that heat lamp in a race against time while some is instantly plucked and purchased, surely destined to be the star of the feast.

Grocery store chicken tends to be tied to a moment, maybe a tailgate or jaunt to the beach or picnic in the park.

And such moments deserve the best chicken. A team of eaters from The News & Observer, as in my editor Brooke Cain and I, spent four hours on a Tuesday visiting the major fried chicken-selling grocery stores in Raleigh.

We visited eight different grocery stores among seven different brands and bought six orders of fried chicken. We ate chicken from 10:30 a.m. to 2:30 p.m., weaving in and out of the Raleigh Beltline, cutting through North Raleigh shopping centers and wrapping up on New Bern Avenue.

Pieces of chicken were judged on juiciness, crisp and crunch, seasoning and value, and were ranked from worst to incredible. It should be noted that nothing was terrible, it is fried chicken, after all.

6. Food Lion

After stopping at two different Food Lions we found fresh fried chicken to be elusive.

The first Food Lion we stopped at was out of chicken by 12:30 p.m. and the next batch wasn’t due for half an hour. Two grocery stores later, the chicken at a second Food Lion (around 1:20 p.m.) wouldn’t be out for another 40 minutes. So we cut our losses and bought a bargain bag of 11 a.m. chicken.

Food Lion’s chicken comes with an excessively heavy, crusty breading, but two hours in a bag meant the crunch was long gone. Beneath that thick breading the chicken had mostly dried out. This is not the star of the picnic, but the seasoning, led with coarse ground black pepper you can see in the breading, wasn’t bad.

5. Walmart

It’s all surface level stuff for the fried chicken at Walmart. Here the chicken is coated in the thickest breading we encountered in the taste test, which takes a hefty bite to cut through. Unfortunately that crust is where all the flavor is, hitting you with a pretty well seasoned and spicy mix of black pepper and salt, but none of that really makes it to the chicken. The crust is heavily browned bordering on over-fried and the chicken isn’t too dried out, but there’s an imbalance in every bite that makes you feel like you’re just chewing on breading.

Walmart and Food Lion’s chicken proved to be very similar, but Walmart gets the edge because it was hot and fresh and didn’t send us to two stores.

4. Harris Teeter

In a carousel of heat lamps and warming shelves, Harris Teeter serves its fried chicken in buckets. It’s the only grocery store in the taste test to embrace the bucket, where eight pieces sell for $7.99. While the charm factor of the bucket is immense, it does have it downside. The Harris Teeter chicken had mostly lost its crisp in all but the thickest parts of the batter, likely from the dewy condensation. The chicken was well-coated and the crust was thin and flaky.

This is chicken that’ll likely have you reaching for the hot sauce, as the seasoning comes with a light touch, bordering on bland.

3. Lowe’s Foods

The fried chicken at Lowe’s comes from the cartoon branded “Chicken Kitchen,” a counter in the back that serves fried and rotisserie chicken, wings and fixings. We ordered a la carte pieces, opting for a leg and thigh. The Lowe’s chicken is among the crispiest you’ll find, fried to a light and golden tan that shatters into confetti with one bite. The dark meat of the thigh is juicy and well seasoned, but a touch of salt wouldn’t hurt in our batch.

2. Carlie C’s IGA

There aren’t many Carlie C’s markets in the Triangle, so we saved it for last in the event we were too chickened out to try another bite. Though we were feeling sluggish, somehow a hunger for fried chicken remained. It’s a good thing, because Carlie C’s serves truly excellent fried chicken.

Even in the slowdrums of the mid-afternoon, there was a line at the chicken counter. We ordered a two-piece “Snack Pack” which came with a leg, thigh and yeast roll. The Carlie C’s chicken is possibly the most uniformly crusted in the taste test, completely wrapped in a golden brown shell that’s craggy and crispy and absolutely locks in juicy, fatty, dark meat. That crust doesn’t flake, it eats as one thin sheet around the chicken, so you might run into that dillemma where you pull it all off with one bite.

Carlie C’s also could have stepped up the seasoning a tad with a touch of salt, and there was no black pepper to be found, but these are only quibbles on otherwise succulent, crispy, picnic-worthy chicken.

1. Publix

This was our first stop on the grocery store chicken tour and it was impossible to beat. The chicken at Publix is as good as any we’re aware of, price point be damned.

Bypassing the bucket, Publix serves its chicken in a cardboard box with a little plastic window so you can peek your chicken before toting it home. Our chicken was mostly crispy all the way around, with a touch of sogginess and missing breading here and there. But any imperfections are quickly forgiven with one bite into the juiciest chicken you’re likely to find in any grocery store. We’re talking fingers glistening, lips shimmering juiciness. Some might call it grease, but we call it magic.

The Publix chicken was also by far the best seasoned, bordering on salty, but finding the perfect balance between the richness of a dark meat thigh and the crunch of the breading. This is the chicken you’re looking for.

A note on Wegmans fried chicken

No other grocery store in the Triangle can match the smorgasbord of prepared foods to be found in Wegmans. It’s a burger shop and a pizzeria and a pastry counter and a sushi bar and so much more. So our hopes were high when it came to fried chicken and our hearts soared when we saw a banner hanging from the ceiling declaring “Follow your heart to chicken love.” That’s exactly what we were looking for.

We searched around and there was no fried chicken to be found. We loitered by the wing bar and learned from a Wegmans chef that we could order wings and chicken tenders, but not bone-in fried chicken. Wings and tenders ain’t fried chicken, so we left.

But on our way out we noticed an 8-piece pack of chilled fried chicken by the entrance — chicken that wasn’t for sale anywhere else in the store. We considered adding the chilled chicken to the taste test, because cold fried chicken is also great, but how do you compare the crunch and succulence of hot chicken to the chilled chewiness of cold chicken? You can’t, so Wegmans was disqualified.

This story was originally published June 13, 2023 at 5:30 AM with the headline "We tasted fried chicken at all of Raleigh’s grocery stores. Here’s how we ranked them."

Drew Jackson

The News & Observer

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Drew Jackson writes about restaurants and dining for The News & Observer and The Herald-Sun, covering the food scene in the Triangle and North Carolina.