Dovie’s Fries Your Chicken to Order. Bring Twelve Minutes.

Dovie’s is the best plate of fried chicken in Rock Hill for the money, and you will wait for it. The chicken goes into the fryer after you pay, which puts twelve minutes between the register and the plate. Regulars know this and order before they look for a seat. I did it the other way around and spent the twelve minutes watching a man in a work vest eat the plate I had just ordered.

The room is a counter with eleven stools and six four-top tables. The day’s vegetables are on a chalkboard by the register and the menu does not change otherwise. Lunch runs 11 to 2:30, Monday through Friday. I went in the noon rush and was ninth in line; twenty minutes later the line was out the door and onto the Saluda Street sidewalk.

A plate is one meat and three sides for $12.50, or four sides for $14, with a wedge of cornbread or a roll. I had the fried chicken (a thigh and a leg; white meat is a dollar more), collards, mac and cheese, and stewed tomatoes. The chicken is the reason to go. The crust is thin and rough. It stays on the meat, and the thigh under it was still steaming when the plate landed. It had been out of the oil for under a minute. The salt was right. I did not touch the hot sauce on the counter, and I usually do.

The collards are the second reason. The pot has smoked turkey in it and no sugar, and the liquor is clear and sharp with vinegar, which puts Dovie’s in a minority in York County. The stewed tomatoes were sweet in the old way and I ate all of them.

The mac and cheese is the weak plate, and it is on about three quarters of the plates in the room. It is baked in a hotel pan and cut into squares, and by the back half of the rush the squares had been under the lamp long enough to set. Mine was warm at the edge and cool in the middle. It tasted like decent cheddar and it needed ten more degrees. Go after 12:15 and trade it for the lima beans or the fried okra, which come out of a pot that is still on the burner.

The sweet tea is sweet in the way that gets into your back teeth, served in a plastic tumbler over a lot of ice, two dollars with a free refill. There is an unsweetened version. I watched one person order it in forty minutes.

The register takes cards with no minimum, which is more than I can say for two other lunch counters in town. There is a tip jar and no tip screen. The guy at the register calls plates by their sides, so listen for “chicken, collards, mac, tomatoes.” Nobody is going to call your name.

With a tea and a slice of chess pie it came to about $19 with tax. The pie came from a pan on the counter and I could have skipped it. The chicken I could not have.

Parking is a lot of about eleven spaces plus the street. At the peak of the rush the lot was full and there was one space on the street. Go at 11:30 or at 1:30 and it is a different restaurant: no line and a stool at the counter. The chicken still takes twelve minutes.

Score: 8.6. The chicken and the collards are a 9.5 at lunch-counter prices. The mac and cheese and the pie pull it down, and the wait is the wait.