This Is Florida's Hands Down Best Fried Chicken Sandwich

The state of Florida is known for a great deal of things — most of them wildly outlandish, but others surprisingly true. Any good foodie knows that if you're visiting the Sunshine State, you've got to try some of Florida's fresh seafood, but turns out that Floridians know a thing or two about fried chicken, too. On a recent quest to discover the 50 absolute best chicken sandwiches from 50 states, we determined that M's Fried Yardbird at Red Rooster Overtown puts Miami on the map as a must-stop destination for fried chicken sandwiches.

M's Fried Yardbird sandwich is comprised of fried chicken that's served with hot honey, tangy collard greens, pickles, and sweet potato on a thick brioche bun — a spicy-sweet flavor profile that's not far off from our hot honey chicken biscuit sandwich recipe. This chicken sandwich runs at about $33, but reviews on Yelp often say it is "flavorful, moist, and [has] delightfully crispy skin." Another Yelp review called the sandwich "probably the best fried chicken [they've] ever had in [their] life," while someone else agreed that the chicken was "perfectly fried, moist and crispy." While one review on OpenTable said that the "chicken was bland with a perfect crisp, with honey to cover up the non-seasoned meat," another customer on the thread disagreed, saying "the Fried Yardbird was the BEST [they've] ever had."

We might argue that Red Rooster Overtown's fried chicken sandwich is the best in Florida, but it's not all the restaurant is known for. Customers come in for seafood, burgers, steaks, salads, and more. Chicken-wise, there's Tristen's Whole Damn Bird, which is a massive entree with a whole chicken glazed in smoked tamarind-Malta with crispy thighs and a cold chicken potato salad, and the Kings Jambalaya, which is a jambalaya rice with more of that famous fried chicken, braised oxtails, red shrimp, collard greens, and caramelized plantains that feeds three to four people. There are plenty of sides to accompany the dishes, and although M's Fried Yardbird doesn't come with any sides specifically, customers often recommend ordering the mac and cheese, M's Cornbread, or the collard greens.

Red Rooster Overtown was opened in December 2020 by Derek Fleming and celebrity chef Marcus Samuelsson, a sister restaurant to the Red Rooster located in Harlem, New York. The restaurant is geared toward American cuisine with diverse cultural roots, bringing the spirit of its specific neighborhood into every aspect, from the design to the menu. The building itself is famous, once home to Clyde Killens' pool hall, which once saw the likes of celebrities like Ella Fitzgerald and Aretha Franklin, though Franklin's favorite soul food tended to be chitterlings, not fried chicken. The Miami restaurant was even honored with the Michelin Bib Gourmand in 2022.