Champy’s Famous Fried Chicken

I found Champy’s on Google maps. I was staying at HI Express and needed a new place to eat. When i got here the place looked casual with an outside bar and seating area. I went inside since it was 97 outside temp. When i got inside the place looked awesome. I sat at the bar and the bartender immediately came over and helped me order and served my beverage in seconds. I will always come back here when i visit Chatt-​Vegas!

Maybe it’s because of the people I work with giving this place an overwhelming 5 star rating that might set me off a tad, but to me it was okay. The food is good, it’s small and cramped and on certain days just unreal with no parking at all because of the location. The chicken pieces are very large which is satisfying, but there isn’t a taste that separates this from say «walmart» over the counter chicken. If you’ve never been, I recommend trying for the sake of it, but it’s not my first choice for chicken.

Love this place. Nothing bad. Wings are amazing, of course the chicken is phenomenal! Staff makes it one of our favorite places!

Can’t really overemphasize how pleased we are with this place. The service if anything has gotten even better and the food is delicious.

Wow, they have crawfish on the weekends during crawfish season. Okay, might not stack up with getting them in Louisiana, however I eaten them here several times and will continue to do so.

My parents just moved to Chattanooga and my husband and I are visiting from Denver, CO. Dad really wanted to check this place out. The fried chicken, service, and atmosphere were great! The only reason Champy’s doesn’t get a 5– star review is because of the amount of waste coming out of dining here. Seriously, styrofoam cups & plates? Plastic cups for beer? You’re breaking my heart. I work in the industry and have seen how feasible it is to compost or recycle 90% of restaurant waste. I suppose making a profit wins over caring about the future here. :(Sad to see in this day and age, especially after such a great tour at the TN Aquarium yesterday that focused on changing the way we treat trash (in our rivers and steams… which all lead to the ocean…).

Just damn! Tamales, great sides, AMAZING chicken. Just go already. Oh, and get a 40. Go already…

This place has excellent casual food. The place was packed, so we called ahead and got take out from their drive-​through window. The best iced tea I’ve had since I arrived in Chatty. I’ve never had a hot tamale before, so I tried them, and now I can’t stop thinking about them!

Traveling from Nashville to Atlanta, and has to get some fried chicken. The chicken had some kick to it, and was super greasy but DELICIOUS! Also, the coozies for 40s were hilarious, cool place!

As advertised! Ordered tamales and half chicken plate. Honestly some of the best tamales and fried chicken I have ever had. Also get the potato salad as a side, more of a mustard base and it’s awesome! Service was great and atmosphere was very cool.
Very much recommended.

You walk in and the atmosphere is amazing. Good music, neon lights and a bunch of dollar bills on the wall. Plus a bunch of goofy shit that would make Farva think he was at Shenanigans. This should be enough to visit, but there is more. When you order your beer, you aren’t ordering a normal bottle of bud or whatever, you are ordering a mother fucking 40! That’s right. Grab your 40, look at the menu and decide if you are game for the 3 piece or the 2 piece. Typically you should do the 3, because this is America. Rookie move is to not substitute a side, so I got the mashed potatoes (which were amazing) with the baker beans (also, amazing). Once i finished my sides it was on to the main attraction. The chicken. I had half a chicken to eat and it was delicious from the first bite to the last bite. I of course hated my self for eating so much, but I would do it again always. I finished my 40, cleaned the chicken off my fingers, stapled a dollar to the wall and left.
All in all, the place is awesome. The wait staff is on point, the atmosphere is great and the food is the best I’ve ever had. ¹⁰⁄₁₀ would go back in an instant.

This chicken joint is amazing. From the sides to the main event. Everything was outstanding. Fried chicken and hot tamales = grate food.

Overall pretty cool place. We were recommended by a local while skydiving earlier in the day.
Food: awesome, good portions, good temperature.
Atmosphere: laid back, families and business fun.
Service: decent, no beer list on the table so the waitress had to let us glance at hers while we were trying to order quick. The waitress was sweet and came quickly.
Only docking it to 4 for the pressure to order a drink fast, not knowing what they had. Other than that a great experience!

Hell ya! Best bar down south with incredible fried chicken. It’s a dive, the locals are a blast and they dish up some serious good fried chicken. Fried pickles are great too as are the fried chicken livers and fried chicken tenders. Hell, get anything here that is fried and you will love it!
Worry about the amount of beer and fat calories another day. Champy’s is a southern guilty pleasure of mine and should be one of yours too!

Easily the best fried chicken in the dirty south. I’m not only saying that as fried chicken enthusiast but as a fried chicken specialist. You can trust me, I’m a doctor.
No, but in all seriousness, it boasts being the best fried chicken in the southeast, and I have no qualms with that statement. The only recommendation I have is to come during the off hours because it gets packed around lunch and dinner time, but hey, that’s expected of a place with such good food right?

This place is amazing, from the food to the dive bar atmosphere it is all great! This chicken is delicious. It’s crispy, juicy, & well seasoned. I also ordered the hot wings, and to my surprise they were impeccable.
I wasn’t expecting them to be terrible considering the fried chicken was incredible, but I was surprised by the smoky flavor and texture of the hot wings. They had a bit to them like a nice rib and the fire of a hot wing. Mind blown. I also loved the hole in the wall atmosphere. I do not shy away from a hole in the wall, dive bar place. I know the food will be good. Fried chicken and 40s, what could be better?

I am not a bar fly, so patronizing a bar or eating at a bar that also serves food is not my MO. For the record.
I intended to visit a «new» establishment up the street but their signage did not indicate whether they accepted credit cards. Since I don’t carry cash, I drove up two blocks to Champys.
I ordered the two dark piece chicken meal. It comes with baked beans and coleslaw. I don’t do beans on a work day so I asked if a substitute was offered. I could choose any other side for an additional .25cent. I selected potato salad.
I only waited 10 minutes for my meal. It came Hot, Fresh, and Now.
Chicken spices and breaking were palette pleasing. Minimal grease thanks to the white bread that sat under the chicken to sop up any leaking grease.
Coleslaw was dry BUT was homemade! Clearly! I liked it. Cabbage with some darker greens mixed in. Right up my alley.
Potato salad appeared and honestly tasted store bought. It was dressed with a variety of spices which I suspect started with paprika as the base. It tasted okay, the spices helped.
The amount of food served is not enough to fill a hungry, working man.
My drink was a sweet/​unsweet ⁵⁰⁄₅₀ without lemon. Cold drinks of the non-​alcoholic variety are served with pellet ice!
Music is from the 1970s and sounds like «Motown» music, some of which I knew and some not.
Décor is total randomness interspersed with bar signage.
Champys is a bar that serves food. It hit the spot. That was my expectation thus I am satisfied.

OH REALLY?
What they don’t tell you is that Champy’s is really a bar that just happens to sell chicken. Although I felt like an atheist in church, I made it through. I guess it is a «typical bar», (I wouldn’t know), because it had the beer logos splashed all over the place as part of the décor. Lots of visual clutter, but some people would find it interesting. It was okay just not my scene. It was also very hard on my allergies, (bars=smoking), so if you are sensitive to smells, you will need to be aware of this. There was no smoking in the bar, but it did sort of stream in from the patio.
It was very busy when we showed up around 9pm. We were seated promptly and placed our order. I sampled the wings, fries, coleslaw and hush puppy. The coleslaw had a very nice unexpected taste. I never order it, (this was my husband’s), because it is usually bland but this time I was pleasantly surprised. The puppy was a nice bite with an interesting seasoning blend while the battered fries tasted really good after we removed the additional salt. We usually order fries without salt but forgot this time.
The chicken was just okay for me because it was too wet. I prefer a slightly drier chicken (when I’m eating wings), with a very light coating if at all.
One of the things we noticed when we left is that the smell of old cooking oil permeated our clothing. UGGh! I hate when that happens, but I haven’t had that problem in years so if this is an issue for you, you may not want to eat in. They do have a drive thru.
I think that their prices are inflated for what they deliver and they should offer «just chicken» dinners for those who do not want to add sides.

These 5 stars are for the chicken and the chicken only. This place is so hole in the wallish and country. But when you’re in the south, that’s a good sign. I walked right past the damn hostess because I figured it was seat yourself. It’s not. We opted to sit outside. The waitress wasn’t particularly friendly but hey, what could I expect in Chattanooga.
I ordered the tenders with potato salad and slaw. Those tenders knocked my socks off! So yummy and hand breaded. That champy sauce was too sweet for me so the ranch was fine for me! The potato salad was off the chain. Not good as grandma’s but they damn sure got close!
They serve 40s and beer. I asked for a Margarita and she suggested a Lime-​A-​Rita (girl bye) as they don’t serve margaritas. I don’t know if they have liquor at all actually besides beer.
The bathroom was cool. Pictures of celebrities and such. Apparently the owner has traveled the world and takes champys with him everywhere he goes.
My friend had the catfish but she said the chicken was waaay better. I’ll come back if I ever come back to Chattanooga

There’s just something about a dive that I can’t help but LOVE!
Surrounded by newly revitalized buildings in Downtown Chattanooga, Champy’s looking like the building nobody wanted. This place looks so decrepit it redefines the term hole-​in-​the-​wall. It’s winter, so the patio was covered in thick plastic sheets making it difficult to tell if they were open for business. However, the amazing scent in the air left no doubt somebody is in there cooking!
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THE EXPERIENCE
It was difficult to tell just which plastic sheet was the entrance, but after we figured out how to get inside we found a table to our liking and sat down. Space is broken up into three areas: the main seating area, a heated patio and a side room with lots more natural light than the dim main seating area.
Coating the walls are loads of quirky items like bikes, neon signs, old newspaper articles, Christmas lights, t-​shirts, drink koozies and lots of money! It seems to be a tradition here to leave a dollar bill with your name and a message. There has got to be several hundreds, maybe thousands of dollars acting as wallpaper here.
Our server was super sweet and extremely friendly, we couldn’t have asked for a more pleasant person. But that also goes for many of the people we came across while visiting Chattanooga. A couple sitting near us could tell it was our first visit and joyfully gave us a few recommendations. Their enthusiasm for Champy’s was apparent in their animated way of speaking. I love people like that! They highly recommended the chicken fingers, but I tend to like chicken much better on the bone. So I ordered a two piece meal with one chicken nugget as a side.
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THE FOOD
* 2 PIECE CHICKEN DINNER (4.5 stars) | $ 8.25
Crispy, juicy, well-​seasoned and piping hot because it’s cooked to order! My only complaint: it was a tad salty. In my younger days, there was no such thing as too much salt. However, as I’ve grown older, my taste buds are less accepting of high salt contents. On this day their chicken was on the too salty borderline, but still acceptable.
* CHICKEN TENDERS (4 stars) | Add to plate for $ 2.75 each
Great flavor. Less salty that the fried chicken pieces but also not quite as flavorful.
* TAMALES (1 star) | N/​C
Odd that a fried chicken joint specializes in tamales, but it’s true. The minimum order is 3, so my food glutton of a personality couldn’t pass on the opportunity to try a sampling. I love tamales, but these were not to my liking. These are unlike Mexican tamales and are known as Mississippi Delta style. Have you ever had the canned tamales by Hormel? My father bought them religiously when I was a kid, but I was never a fan. I rarely ever send food back, but these tamales had to go.
They taste just like these:

** FRIES (3 stars) | $ 2.99
I LOVE french fries like I love kisses from my wife. I could have them daily and with every meal, but my bodies lack of ability to burn calories as it once did causes me to fear french fries. Still I will indulge, but I must say the fries here were just too greasy. I hate that I loved the flavor, because I consumed more than I should. But as Water Boy would say: «These fries are the devil!» I can’t imagine the fat content in them, but I would venture to guess anyone who eats these fries regularly certainly may have a coronary bypass in their future.
** GREEN BEANS (4.5 stars) | $ 2.99
Perfectly cooked and seasoned. I actually enjoyed the fact they were not as seasoned as the other items. I couldn’t handle any more salt.
** BAKED BEANS (3.5 stars) | included
I generally prefer my baked beans to be super sweet, but these weren’t bad. I didn’t particularly like the vinegar flavor and it was sort of weird to see kidney beans mixed in, but not a deal breaker.
** SLAW (2.5 stars) | included
’Meh’, I’ve had better.
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FINAL THOUGHTS
Excellent fried chicken, but a tad salty. Still the flavor of the chicken and the service was enough to make me a believer. Since this visit, I’ve discovered Champy’s has opened a Georgia location less than 45 minutes from my home. Not quite the hole-​in-​the-​wall look of the original location, but pretty close! I think Champy’s will be a big hit in Georgia; especially in a college town like Athen.
Champy’s [Athens, GA]: