Muscle Shoals’ Champy’s: Hand-Marinated Chicken, Hot Tamales, and Shoals Spirit

It’s Friday night at Champy’s Fried Chicken in Muscle Shoals, Alabama. The place glows under strings of red lights, flags hang from the ceiling, and dollar bills cover the walls — each one a story left behind. Every table’s full, the sound of laughter mixes with live music, and the smell of fried chicken and hot tamales fills the air. It’s the kind of night where you can feel the South — loud, laid back, and full of life.

“Yeah,” Wade Baker says with a grin, “it’s like this every night pretty much. Especially Fridays and Saturdays. Sometimes Thursdays too — depends what’s going on in the area.”

Eric eating the highly demanded fried chicken from Champy’s Famous Fried Chicken in Muscle Shoals, Alabama

The place has that old Mississippi Delta heartbeat to it. A juke joint, right here in Muscle Shoals. Wade grew up in Memphis and the Delta, where hot tamales, cold beer, and fried chicken weren’t just food — they were a way of life.

“I moved here in 2006 with my wife,” Wade says. “And I just knew the Shoals needed something like this. A juke joint — old Mississippi Delta style. Fried chicken, hot tamales, cold beer, live music. That’s what it’s all about.”

And that’s exactly what it is. For fourteen years, Champy’s has been dishing up fresh, never-frozen Southern comfort and giving local musicians a home stage.

“We’d be foolish to come to Muscle Shoals and not tie in with the music scene — the greatest in the world,” Wade says. “So we built relationships with the musicians, and here’s what you see. Fried chicken, cold beer, and live music. You can’t beat it.”

The menu’s simple on purpose. Fried chicken. Catfish. Wings. Tamales. Everything fresh, nothing frozen. “Our chicken’s hand-marinated for twenty-four hours in our own recipe, then breaded and fried to order. You can taste the difference,” Wade explains.

The catfish comes Mississippi-style — hand-breaded, fried golden, served with homemade tartar and slaw. The wings are local legends. “Fresh jumbo wings — never frozen. We smoke ‘em over hickory, flash fry ‘em, and toss ‘em in one of our sauces: homemade buffalo or Mississippi Delta Sweet Heat. They’ve won Best of Wings in Chattanooga and Muscle Shoals more than once. We sell a ton,” Wade says.

And then there are the hot tamales — the kind you can’t find anywhere else. “It’s a sixty-year-old recipe from the Mississippi Delta,” Wade says. “Hand-rolled. Served with slaw and crackers. It’s not a Mexican thing — it’s a Mississippi Delta thing.”

When they first opened, people thought Wade was crazy. “Everybody said it’d never work. ‘You don’t have a burger? You don’t have this or that?’ Nope. We do fried chicken, catfish, wings, and tamales. That’s it. That’s what we do.”

Fourteen years later, Champy’s Fried Chicken in Muscle Shoals is still right here — same spot, same heart, same recipes that made folks fall in love the first time.

If you sit down on a Friday night, Wade will tell you exactly what to order. “You gotta try some fried chicken — both white and dark. Some baked beans, slaw, hot tamales, wings, Delta fried green tomatoes — and don’t leave without my wife’s banana pudding. It’s unbelievable.” He laughs when asked about hot chicken. “We got our own hot,” he says. “Our own hot breading recipe. It’s spicy — pretty hot — but it’s good.”

By the end of the night, the music’s rolling, plates are clean, and the air hums with that easy Shoals rhythm. It’s not just a restaurant. It’s a story — fried, sung, and served with a side of Mississippi Delta soul.