Each year, we ask Orange County Register readers to choose their favorite places to shop, dine, play and do business in OC.
Here are the top picks for Best chicken restaurant:
1. Epic WIngs
Anaheim, Mission Viejo, Santa Ana; epicwings.com
Despite being dwarfed by larger chain chicken stores, Epic Wings scores big with readers and eaters. And while the overall fast-food chicken industry has surged, wings have really taken flight with Americans consuming between 25 and 30 billion per year.
As a result, you have to do something special to be noticed in the category.
Epic has done this in a big way.
The San Diego-based chain has grown in a careful and strategic way, with three stores in Orange County, including one by a member of the founding family.
“We really pride ourselves on being local and staying on the West Coast,” says CEO Matt Friedman, who has been in the “wing business” for 27 years.
The chicken at Epic Wings is meaty, high quality and never frozen, according to Friedman.
“We don’t even own a freezer,” he says.
The breadsticks are made daily from scratch as are the homemade sauces and dips.
Epic leans heavily on freshness and food cooked to order.
The menu is intentionally lean with chicken strips and bone-in Buffalo wings, breadsticks, fries, salads and cinnabites. There are more than a dozen dipping sauces, including five Buffalo sauces and “our famous ranch and bleu cheese made from family recipes,” says Friedman.
The company is still owned and run by the Sacco Family, which launched in San Diego in 1982 after arriving from, where else, Buffalo.
Also see: Best of Orange County 2026: See all the winners
2. Chick-fil-A
Multiple locations; chick-fil-a.com
When you become America’s largest fastfood chicken restaurant in sales while only being open six days a week, you’re doing something right. And although the Monday-Saturday schedule, adopted in 1946 at the original Dwarf Grill, costs the company about $1 billion in sales, there are no plans afoot to change it.
In keeping with its roots and to celebrate its 80th anniversary, Chick-fil-a returned a number of past seasonal favorites as part of a “Newstalgia” program. “delivering timeless favorites with fresh new twists,” Khalila Cooper, vice president of brand strategy, advertising and media said in a statement.
Whatever Chick-fil-A is doing, it works, as can be attested to by anyone passing the long queues of cars lined up for takeout.
From its original chicken sandwich, to nuggets, to a summer honey pepper pimento sandwich, one of its 80th anniversary re-releases, not to mention fixins such as salads, sides and desserts, Chick-Fil-a can fulfill your chicken fix.
3. Raising Cane’s Chicken Fingers
Multiple locations; raisingcanes.com
Those who visit these popular eateries are in search of one thing — chicken fingers. Good idea since, other than a few sides, that’s what you get. About as far as Raising Cane’s strays is putting three fingers in a toasted bun and calling it a sandwich.
“Our focus has been on serving the highest-quality chicken finger meals we can make, and we’ve built our entire business around doing that exceptionally well,” says Blake Maggard, area leader of restaurants for Cane’s. “When customers come to Cane’s, they know exactly what they’re getting: hot, fresh, cooked-to-order chicken fingers.”
Sides consist of crinkle fries, cole slaw and Texas toast, and that’s it.
And there is Raising Cane’s “secret” dipping sauce — mainly mayo and ketchup with dashes of spice to give it a piquant zing.
Cane’s, with 16 OC locales, is the No. 3 U.S. fast-food chicken chain with about $5 billion in sales.
Dining and Cooking