Heading home from Memphis, we were over-nighting in Jackson, Mississippi, before heading home.  We had been to a couple of junk and antique stores when lunch rolled around.  I knew that I wanted fried chicken for lunch, so while we shopped I asked several folks where the “best” fried chicken was in Jackson.  I got a variety of answers that mostly focused on one of the two Picadillys in town – I was obviously asking the wrong people (I also got suggestions for KFC and Popeye’s).  That wasn’t in the cards, so I went with one from the list – Bully’s Restaurant.  I had Bully’s on my list from the Garden ‘N Gun fried chicken bucket list.

We arrived a little early for lunch, pulling up in the gravel parking lot and parked beside a big Class A RV.  We saw him heading back to his trailer and asked and he was picking up food for tailgating.  By the time we left, the gravel lot was full and there were folks parked on the other side of the street.  Bully’s is a family owned (and family built – Tyrone Bully and his father actually built the brick building they are housed in) that’s been open in the same place since 1982.  The servers take your order on an old school order pad, call it out in the kitchen and put it on the rotating stand you can see in the window above.  The food arrived on divided trays that reminded both of us of elementary school.  My wife had turnip greens, field peas and baked chicken.

The chicken was extremely moist and even though she prefers collard greens to turnips, she said that these were some of the best greens she had ever eaten.  They take the “Soul Food” on the sign seriously – it was a classic meat and two, which featured neck bones, pig feet, smothered oxtails, smothered turkey necks and chitterlings, along with the chicken, hamburger steak and pork chops.  I went with fried chicken (that’s what I was after), the same field peas my beloved had and dressing with brown gravy.

The chicken had a golden crust and was a bit salty, and, like the baked chicken, was amazingly moist.  I hope you can see how moist it was in the picture below.

The dressing was cornbread based and had the same salty tang to it.  The guys at the table next to us had the smothered oxtails and the mac-n-cheese.  The oxtails smelled great (I was there for chicken) and the mac-n-cheese looked incredible (I was trying to keep lunch under 1,000 calories).  If you’re looking for the best fried chicken in Jackson, don’t go to Picadilly – go to Bully’s.