Bawk!
I’ve been thinking about fried chicken recently… and does Sacramento have good fried chicken? I don’t mean fast food fried chicken like KFC and Popeye’s. Of course Sac has those places, and I also don’t mean Korean fried chicken either. I’m looking for your good traditional crispy American fried chicken. Does it exist in Sacramento?
I’ll tell you this. There aren’t too many places to try.
Off the top of my head there’s Fixins Soul Kitchen and Sarom’s Southern Kitchen as well as a number of gas station places. I’ve visited Fixins and Sarom’s already, and I’m just not going to count gas station places for now. What else is there? Well, there’s Bawk!
Bawk! is a restaurant on R Street. They specialize in fried chicken, so it better be good.
On my visit to Bawk! I found their fried chicken to be better than most. The chicken is cooked fresh and comes to you piping hot. It’s a nice tradition fried outside with pretty tender and juicy meat on the inside. I could really tell the quality here and it is well above the average fried chicken place in Sacramento.
I would put it on par with Fixins and a little better than Sarom’s. The chicken here didn’t feel too greasy and the chicken plate also came with your choice of two sides.
I went with the mac and cheese as well as the cornbread. I visited Bawk! in the middle of the afternoon so maybe that’s the reason the mac and cheese was a little on the dry side. I wanted a really creamy and cheesy mac, but this one lacked any moisture. It is a baked mac and cheese, but I felt the mac may have been out for a while before it got to me. Again, this may have been because of the hour I chose to visit, but in my opinion it should have been better.
The cornbread on the other hand was very, very good. It may be my favorite cornbread in all of Sacramento. The cornbread came in a generous size and was oozing with moisture. I found it to be sweet and buttery, and it just made me want to keep coming back to it. In fact, it was the first item completely gone from my plate.
My friend gave the fried fish sandwich a try and she really enjoyed it. She’s from the South and told me that it was one of the best fish sandwiches she’d had in the area. This girl is a bit of a picky eater so when she says something is good, my ears perk up. Apparently, the collard greens were also top notch.
Bawk! is a fine place to get some good fried chicken. There may be some consistency issues, but that doesn’t deter it from being a place I’d recommend for fried chicken in Sac.
Website: www.bawkfriedchicken.com
Address: 1409 R Street, Sacramento, Ca 95811
Rating: B
Enjoy both indoor and outdoor patio seating at Bawk!
