Sitting around the table with friends, family and a fried chicken dinner? I’ve done that. Twenty-five times in the last few months, in fact, putting together the Top 10 fried chicken places in San Antonio. But sometimes, convenience and cost are the two main factors deciding where we eat. And while these three walk-up fried chicken joints didn’t find a place among the Top 10, they’re worth talking about for price, for value, for quality and for being there when you need them
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Che’s Chicken & Burgers
Che’s punches way above its weight class, with chicken that’s way better than it needs to be for a South Side walk-up chicken stand with nothing but blacktop and the afternoon sun waiting for you when you walk away from the window. Or maybe it’s exactly as good as it needs to be to stay in business selling chicken and burgers and fish in the middle of summer with nowhere to sit.
A two-piece box with dark meat and a roll starts at $2.89. And a three-piece combo with white and dark meat, fries and a sweet tea costs a penny shy of $10. But it looks, feels, burns your fingers and crunches like chicken from a fancy retro-metro diner. It’s value-priced, it’s fried shaggy but clean, and it’s sent out hot enough to survive the ride home or just to your front car seat, safe in its little white box. 4303 S. Presa St., Suite 1045, 210-533-7989
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Anthony’s Fish & Chicken
Fried chicken has always been a country thing for me, something my Granny cooked all flour-dusted in an iron skillet older than she was. This is that chicken. All the skin, all the crunch, all the character, and nothing but legs and thighs. A three-piece with fries starts at $6.99, and a lunch special from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. gives you eight legs and thighs with fries and a can of soda for $9.99.
It’s as pretty on the inside as it is on the outside, cooked with all the country they can cram in a tiny little box on the side of a gas station at the corner of East Commerce and North Gevers streets on the East Side. More good news? Their chicken tenders landed on my list of Top 10 fried chicken tenders.2403 E. Commerce St., Suite 102, 210-362-1011,orderanthonyfishandchicken.com
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CHICKEN TENDERS:The Top 10
Cap’n Jim’s Fish & Chicken To Go
This sun-baked former Church’s chicken stand has seen better days, but it’s relatively unchanged since I wrote about the restaurants on this stretch of Pleasanton Road a few years back. A little worse for the wear, but still the best overall value in this group, if you don’t mind eating in your car or taking it back to wherever you call home. The menu carries just five things, and within those five things lie countless combinations. Those five things are fried chicken, fried shrimp, fried fish, french fries and sweet tea in 32-ounce cups.
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A two-piece dark-meat fried chicken combo with crinkle fries starts at $3.54, and a three-piece mix of white and dark with fries and tea is the lowest price in this article at just $5.75. There’s nowhere to sit, and the overhang of the roof shades just half of the walk-up window at mid-afternoon. That’s the tradeoff for the prices, and that’s about where the tradeoffs end, because this is good fried chicken, clean and crisp and shaggy, with the juice to back it up. Put them up against Church’s and KFC, and they’d do just fine. Put them up against Bush’s Chicken? They’d blow the doors off the joint. 2026 Pleasanton Road, 210-994-8969
