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Start a Top 5 for SouthernEditor’s picks
Press picks, until locals rank their own Top 5s. Sourced from the local food press. As seen in CTbites and New Haven Independent. Updated August 2026.
Sandra's Next Generation · The Hill
A Hill neighborhood institution where Sandra Pittman has cooked for more than three decades, from selling five-dollar dinners off her back porch at thirteen to a full restaurant. CTbites frames the menu as Southern comfort food drawn from Alabama and the Carolinas. The fried chicken is marinated two days, egg-dipped, then dredged; the chopped BBQ comes with mac and cheese and candied yams from her husband Miguel's family recipe. Order the fried chicken with cornbread, or the chopped BBQ plate.
Haven Hot Chicken - New Haven · Downtown
The New Haven original of a fast-growing Connecticut hot chicken company, founded at this Whitney Avenue address in 2020. When Representative Rosa DeLauro and the mayor gathered to celebrate it, a city economic-development official praised the founders for identifying rich seasonings from the South and bringing them north, per New Haven Independent. The Nashville-style fried chicken comes in escalating heat levels. Order it hot, with the seasoning dialed to your tolerance, and try the cauliflower version too.