Great fried chicken here?
Great fried chicken here? Charles Mudede

I was told that I could find the best fried chicken in Seattle at the Chevron next to an intersection, Martin Luther King Jr. Way and Graham Street, that has to wait until 2031 for the opening of a Link rail station it's been plainly missing since the completion of the first section of the line in 2009.

The reason why the station wasn't built in the first place, why the planners decided to leave a "1.7-mile hole between stations, one of [Link's] longest gaps," and, finally, why so much time is needed to build an at-grade platform for Graham Street Station—all of this will not be investigated or examined in this post.

Instead, I want to communicate the quality of the fried chicken sold at this gas station. Is it really the best in Seattle?

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CM

The answer is no. But the chicken tenders (or fingers) here are special and deserve some recognition for the softness of their meat and the near delicacy of their spice-rich "Krispy" coating. As for the regular fried chicken, it does not surpass what is sold at the Beacon Hill Shell Station, beside what I still rate as the best fried catfish in the city. Nor does it rise above the fried chicken found in the Shell near Columbia City Shell (it's at 3611 South Genesee Street). The fried chicken there is certainly remarkable, but I never can get over the size of the chicken wings and drumsticks (no breasts or thighs there). They are as big as dinosaurs. I do find this troubling.

By the way, the best gas station fried chicken in the region is found at the Hill Top Grocery in Poulsbo. Those who are familiar with the Prancing Goat Farms or Coons Plumbing or who make regular trips to Port Townsend must at one time or another have come across this small business, which seems to sell every kind of booze this civilization has to offer. Sure, Hill Top Grocery doesn't look like the kind of place that knows how to kill fried chicken, but it undoubtedly is. The Chevron on MLK might have great chicken tenders, but, as a whole, it comes nowhere close to what you will find under the heat lamps of Hill Top Grocery.