The best fried chicken in Sydney

It takes a special kind of chicken shop to warrant its own line of merch and to stand the test of time, serving up roasted and fried chicken from 40 years. Since 1982, this beloved Newtown chicken shop has been slinging some of the best, no frills chicken around and the fried chicken here is an underrated and oft overlooked gem. Heavy on white pepper, crisp and flavourful, this is what you wish KFC tasted like but never quite does.
Chuck a couple of deadly garlic potato balls in the mix and you're onto a winner.

This Indonesian Kingsford institution is known for its chicken, served six different ways (variations on satay, charcoal grilled and deep-fried). The grilled is something you’ve got to taste – it’s their speciality and is smoky and super tender. But the deep-fried is equally worth your time, with a crisp coating and chicken that’s been slowly cooked in spices for up to six hours before being fried, making for meat that is both flavourful and seriously juicy.

You know Mary’s for their kickass cheeseburgers, but they do a mean fried chicken as well. Get a half, whole or even two chickens (that one’s called the Larry Bird) and they will arrive to you jointed and basketted, as crispy as you could muster on the outside, and as juicy as you could imagine on the inside. Order the silky mash and gravy on the side for maximum good times.

Take a rowdy German beer hall, add the bells and whistles of a classic American sports bar, and you’ll wind up with something like Winghaus by Bavarian. It’s an offshoot of the Rockpool Group’s ubiquitous Bavarian brand, but like the name suggests, the talking point here is the buffalo wings as much as the 40 beers on tap. You’ve got a choice of classic, boneless or fried bird smothered in one of eight different sauces with varying spice levels and seven dips to go alongside.

Taiwanese-style fried chicken served in a paper bag on Liverpool Street isn't exactly glam but don't be fooled. What started off as a popular Taipei night market staple has now hit the inner city and it’s as close Sydney’s ever come to actually having street food. No, there’s nowhere to sit – it’s really just a tiny neon-lit shopfront – and yes, you have to queue. They fry to order here, which pretty much guarantees a fatty food pavement party.

The splendidly crisp and juicy Korean fried chicken at this Iinner West hole-in-the-wall comes coated in your choice of sauce: sticky and sweet chilli topped with crushed peanuts, garlic soy with sesame and shallots, or for the spice lovers, a dried chilli and coriander number, the ‘Spicy Bomb’. Avoid the anxiety of choice and just order them all. 

Order the special here – it's only $9.90 and comes with a hearty serving of rice, salad, potato noodles and kongnamul (sesame seasoned mung bean salad). On the sauce front, our pick is the sweet and spicy (the gochujang-spiked, bright red spicy sauce is just on the right side of hot and not too sweet), but you can get hot spicy, soy or honey butter mustard too. They change the oil here every day, making for a clean tasting, extra crisp fried batter, and they use a mix of boneless dark and white meat to keep things extra flavoursome and juicy.

This Crown Street chicken shop by the folks behind Middle Eastern diner Nour may be famous for the charcoal style chicken, which is of course awesome, but they're also dishing up some very impressive chicken of the fried variety too. Specifically, the fried chicken burger, which has a fair whack of heat between those tasty crumbed numbers and is worth branching out for.

Here at Melbourne’s beloved chicken shop, recently transported to Sydney, there’s only one thing you have to do: order the wings. The meat has been brined to seasoned tenderness and the coating is seriously crisp – so much so that it crackles as you bite into it, coming off in salty shards. Just try not to nibble at the ends where all that crunchy batter is ready and waiting for the taking. They’re served on a slice of fluffy white bread, which soaks up some of the red, spicy juices. Tear pieces off and eat them along with the meat, maybe even go rogue and make a little sambo of it.

This Surry Hills spot specialises in things that gain a cult like following: fried chicken, sneakers and ramen. If you're here for the chook though, you'll find soft tenders coated in a well seasoned batter, accompained by an excellent hot sauce that comes in four different levels of heat. Also if you have a veggo mate that's hankering for some fried chook, they also do battered mushrooms that manage to pack in a lot of the flavour you'd get from a piece of fried chicken.