Southern soul brought north: A rainbow of crunchy… and not so crunchy offerings from Bushwick’s chains. — Photos by Scarlett Lindeman

While Williamsburg can boast a slew of new-school BBQ joints that fry their chicken to order, for the most part, Bushwick is stuck with chains. You can get it fresh at Stay Focused Café on Wilson and Hancock, but when the craving hits on the wrong side of town, you’ll take what you can get — even if it has been plucked out from under a heat lamp.

This week I worked my way through some of Bushwick’s fried chicken offerings with a couple of friends, self-proclaimed "chicken-heads," calling the marks on crispiness, flavor, juiciness, and recognition for interesting sides. In ascending order… (See locations on map)

	Palace takes the gold for its crunchy, juicy, flavorful chicken.

KFC — A breast and drumstick with a biscuit: $5.43

As the most expensive of the bunch, Colonel Sanders’ chicken was a real disappointment. Heavy on black pepper and salt, the unnervingly soft skin also had a drab color.  The flaccid coating could not mask the bland, dry meat underneath. This shit is expensively bad.

Props For: The Double Down. The KFC think-tank borders on culinary absurdism with this heavyweight — the "buns" are boneless fried chicken breasts, sandwiching bacon, cheese, and special sauce. Seriously.

Kennedy Fried Chicken / Crown Fried Chicken —  2 piece chicken with a roll: $3.50

An NYC institution traditionally run by Afghan immigrants, Kennedy/Crown Fried Chicken’s expansive menu of fried bird, fish, shrimp, and fries, also includes 50-cent Styrofoam cups of instant mashed potatoes and gravy, rice plates, pizza, banana pudding, and bacon cheese burgers. The fried chicken has an orange-tinged crust. The pieces are some of the largest in the running but the meat is bland and slightly dry.

Props For: With the bulletproof glass, seedy wall-mirrors, and neon lighting, you’ll feel like you are eating in a strip club.

Popeye’s —  2 pieces of dark meat chicken with a biscuit: $3.80

Louisiana-style chicken means a shatteringly crisp, thin crust and pleasantly greasy, tasty chicken.  With tender biscuits accompanied by honey-flavored high-fructose corn syrup, it’s like eating fried chicken for dessert.  Pretty pretty good.

Props For: Pillowy butter-flavored biscuits.

Palace Fried Chicken — 2 pieces of chicken: $2.90

Similar to Crown, but with different ownership, the other knightly neighborhood chicken shack also has a strange orange-colored crust but the flavor is all there.  Audibly crisp with a mild garlicky wisp and good salt-to-spice ratio, the meat is juicy and satisfying. Palace Fried Chicken scrapes past Popeyes to take the gold.

Props For: The pizza roll! Take a slice of cheese pizza, mash it up, stuff into an egg-roll casing, deep fry. Best stumbling-home-from-the-bar 99-cent pleasure.