Elizabeth Keyser photo

A Southern supper: chicken with greens, macaroni and corn muffins at Miss Thelma's

Fried chicken is the ultimate Southern treat. How lucky we are in Fairfield County that we don’t have to resort to fast food to fulfill our craving for crunch. In Bridgeport and in Norwalk two South Carolinians, Gloria Garcia of Miss Thelma’s and Jeff Esaw of Jeff’s Cuisine, are making fried chicken the low-country way.

As Esaw will tell you, making good fried chicken takes a lot more than coating chicken in flour and dumping it in the fryer. Esaw follows a timeworn technique to make the chicken moist and not greasy. He marinates it in a secret blend of spices, dredges it in seasoned flour and then fries it at an exact temperature, covered for the first eight minutes. The chicken puffs up and Esaw pokes holes in it so it cooks to the bone during the next ten minutes of uncovered cooking. That’s when the skin turns golden brown.

At Jeff’s Cuisine (54 N. Main St., Norwalk, (203) 852-0041, www.jeffscuisine.com), the fried chicken is just one of the temptations beyond the glass display case heaped with Southern offerings. The pulled pork looks mighty tasty, but no, we’ve come for the fried chicken, and chicken it will be. The coating is crisp and well-seasoned and the meat is juicy. The collards taste meaty; they have shreds of smoked turkey in them. The corn bread comes wrapped in plastic and when you unwrap it you get an incredibly moist cake flecked with large grind yellow corn and hinting of cinnamon. The macaroni is the real deal, baked with a brown crust and tasting of cheddar cheese. The mint iced tea and the lemonade are sweet. A plate of dark meats costs $7.99 and comes with one side and corn bread.

At Miss Thelma’s (140 Fairfield Ave., Bridgeport, (203) 337-9957), we order from the menu rather than the buffet, and the chicken arrives just out of the fryer. Bite into it and the thin brown coating makes an audible crunch, releasing steam from the juicy chicken. For $10, you get dark or white meat (we always choose the more flavorful dark meat), a choice of two side dishes, and corn muffins.

Hoping to counteract the cholesterol-rising effects of deep-fried food, we order collard greens and black-eyed peas. The greens are smoky (they’re cooked with smoked turkey wings) with a sharp bite of vinegar. The black-eyed peas are soft and smoky. Macaroni and cheese is creamy and the green beans taste so good you might forget they’re good for you. The corn muffins arrive warm, topped with melted butter. This is good home-style cooking. The lemonade tastes like real lemon has been used to doctor a mix; it has a mix-aftertaste. Miss Thelma’s has been around for 11 years, and its location across from the courthouse keeps it busy at lunchtime.