Depends on what you want.
Personally, I like several of the chains’ take on fried chicken. My early childhood in 1970s NOLA was all about Church’s & Popeye’s. When we started moving around, we found KFC & Grandy’s. And over the past few years, we’ve tried Golden Chick and Chicken Express.
Each has their food and bad points, so we vary which ones we hit. But KFC’s quality dropped off recently, so we’ve dropped them from our rotation. Chicken Express’ sides have been declining in quality, so we don’t go there as often. Grandy’s locations nearest us disappeared, sooooo…
In contrast, I can only remember a few hyped non-chain places where I genuinely liked their fried chicken, and a couple of those have gone under. Others, we no longer live near.
So I’m actually happy to start experimenting with the Korean take on it. The one issue that’s popping up is the non-Western traditional butchery. In a typical American chicken place, your main pieces will be breasts, wings, thighs and drumsticks. In Korean places, they cut the pieces smaller, based on “lucky” butchery traditions. That makes it harder for those unfamiliar to pick out what’s dark meat or white meat. While I strongly prefer thighs, I’ll eat any fried chicken, TBH. But my mom actively dislikes dark meat, so it’s a real problem for her.
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