March Madness is nearly upon us. Most of your rigorously studied brackets may crumble in a matter of hours as your coworker who picked teams based on the mascots thrives effortlessly. But here at IndyStar you can play a part in choosing the competition.
Carrying on our springtime tradition of celebrating all things greasy and glorious, this year’s IndyStar food bracket will center around none other than fried chicken. But before the tournament kicks off March 9, we need your help selecting 32 poultry purveyors.
Criteria for submissions
Some participants in this challenge will be no-brainers — institutions like Hollyhock Hill on the north side, the Kopper Kettle in Morristown or the James Beard America’s Classics Award-winning Wagner’s Village Inn in Oldenburg. Otherwise, though, we want to get creative, and competitors don’t necessarily have to specialize in fried chicken to merit inclusion. Keep the following criteria in mind as you nominate entries:
Look beyond Marion County, but keep it close to Indy. Like last year’s Tenderloin Tourney, the Chicken Challenge will cast its net far and wide. That said, for the sake of simplicity we’d like to limit entries to places within roughly an hour’s drive of downtown Indy.
(Almost) any fried chicken goes. Whether it’s the quintessentially crusty, pan-fried chicken of the American South, Nashville-style hot chicken or even Korean fried chicken, this bracket is meant to celebrate a wide panoply of poultry. That said, for this contest we are distinguishing between standard fried chicken and similar products like tenders, wings or sandwich patties, all of which could probably merit their own bracket. That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t nominate places that sell wings or tenders; just know this bracket is meant to evaluate whole, ideally bone-in hunks of fried bird.
Stick to independent spots. Like past food brackets, chains aren’t explicitly outlawed, but any multi-location contestants must be relatively small (think two to five shops) and based in Indiana. That means no California-based World Famous Hotboys or Cincinnati-based The Eagle.
You can nominate restaurants using the form below. Over the next week, we will take your entries into account and seed the bracket based on name recognition and number of nominations. It’s an imperfect science, but we hope you’ll join us for the ride through March and early April. Just try not to take things too seriously — this is fried chicken we’re talking about.
Contact dining reporter Bradley Hohulin at bhohulin@indystar.com. You can follow him on Twitter/X @BradleyHohulin and stay up to date with Indy dining news by signing up for the Indylicious newsletter.
This article originally appeared on Indianapolis Star: Announcing IndyStar’s fried chicken bracket. Nominate restaurants here
Reporting by Bradley Hohulin, Indianapolis Star / Indianapolis Star
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