My parents liked to buy their chickens at a live poultry market, so I didn’t grow up eating chicken purchased at supermarkets, or even at butcher shops.

We’d walk around the market, with straw on the floor, serenaded by the squawks and gobbles of the birds in their wooden cages, looking for one that seemed the right size, based on … well, I don’t really know what. But after they poked around, and discussed the chickens with each other, my parents would select one, it would be slaughtered at the market, the feathers would be “flicked” — and it would be wrapped and taken home, fully intact!

Once home, my mother would remove the pin feathers with a tweezer. And then she’d slice the bird open — and surgically remove stuff that, well, we don’t encounter anymore in our Foster Farms fowl. Parts that my sister and I would compete for, believing them to be special. There was the “crown” at the top of the chicken’s head. There were the heart and the liver. My father would eat the gizzard — so chewy, and so tasteless. My mother would eat the feet — even more tasteless. The best of the “lost” parts were the unborn chicken eggs, which emerged like yellow grapes, and tasted so good in soup.

And then there were the wings. There were, thankfully, two per bird — one for me, one for my sister. We’d cook them till they were crisp, cover them with ketchup and gobble everything but the bones. We loved the chicken wings, which back in the day were thought of as poor people’s food — parts of the bird not eaten by society’s upper crust. And then everything changed.

Thanks to Teresa and Frank Bellissimo, owners of the Anchor Bar in Buffalo, New York, chicken wings became a cult culinary pleasure — a joy to eat with a nice, cold beer, covered with cayenne- and vinegar-based hot sauce with butter, and gobbled by the basketful while watching the game o’ the moment.

They were eaten by the dozens — the drumettes, the flats, even the wingtips. Fast-food technology made them boneless, into chicken fries, chicken nuggets, popcorn chicken and Buffalo chicken wing pizza. They spread across the U.S. and Canada, thanks to chains like Buffalo Wild Wings and Hooters. Mickey D’s began serving them. So did Domino’s and Pizza Hut.

Chinese variants appeared, along with Thai, Japanese, Caribbean and Indian. You can find blueberry barbecue wing sauce, and maple/bacon glaze wing sauce. There’s a Wing Bowl Festival in Philadelphia, and a National Buffalo Wing Festival at Highmark Stadium in Buffalo, that’s attended by 80,000 fans over three days. And in 1977, the city of Buffalo declared July 29 to be National Chicken Wing Day.

July is filled with culinary days: July 4 is National Barbecue Day (Of course! ... And there’s another one in May!), July 13 is National French Fry Day, July 21 is National Junk Food Day and the last Thursday of the month (July 28 this year) is National Chili Dog Day. But no day gets to me as much as National Chicken Wing Day.

I loved chicken wings growing up in the Bronx. I love them here in SoCal. If anything, they’ve gotten better. And they’re everywhere. I have to believe chickens have been bred to have a dozen wings. Whatever — I need my wings, skin and all. And there are lots of joints where they make them so good! With a nice cold beer, of course. They began six decades ago to go with beer, and they still do — perfectly!

Tokyo Fried Chicken Co.

122 S. Atlantic Blvd., Monterey Park >> 626-282-9829, tokyofriedchicken.com

Now let me be very specific: You go to Tokyo Fried Chicken Co. for … fried chicken. They do not offer hamburgers. The closest they come to a salad is coleslaw, potato salad and, I guess, cold tofu with house dressing. There is no kale in sight — though one of the side dishes is collard greens in miso broth with bacon, which is a near cousin.

There’s often a wait outside for a table in this diminutive miniature mall eatery — that’s notably open for dinner only, Wednesday through Sunday. You want some fried chicken for lunch? Get it the night before and reheat it. It won’t be nearly as good. But it still will be good.

If Tokyo was a suburb of Savannah, Georgia, I guess this is what locals would flock to. This is classic Southern fried chicken, so crisp it’s still sizzling when it arrives at the table, a pile of parts coated with the most beautiful crust, golden brown, juicy within, spiced and herbed to perfection — a remarkable plate of fried chicken.

Once you’ve finally landed a table (there aren’t many), the way to go is with the Chicken Dinner Sets — served for one, two, three, four or, I suppose, more. Dinner Sets consist of drumsticks, wings and thighs, with breasts served on request. I’m a dark meat guy who long has felt that breasts are fine — but dry, or at least dryer. Give me a thigh oozing juices anytime.

It’s best served with a pair of Honey Bears, filled with regular ponzu sauce, and spicy ponzu sauce — a happy touch, in a happy restaurant, with some of the most affable servers around. Who wants grumpy chicken?

Order the Chicken Dinner Set for Two and you’ll get six pieces of chicken, two sides, a plate of ginger-flavored pickled cabbage (that will probably vanish instantly!), and an oversized bowl of chicken-flavored rice that’s worth paying attention to — this is very tasty rice, not fried, but steamed with chicken broth. It’s a meal of chicken with chicken.

You’ve got to get the various chicken parts to get the wings; they don’t offer them separately.

Not that I’m complaining — for me, the wings are a chicken-flavored dessert. A bonus that comes with everything else.

The Dive Oyster Bar

Camellia Square, 5708 Rosemead Blvd., Temple City >> 626-766-1569, divesteamkettlecooking.com

At The Dive Oyster Bar, there are some options for mixing and matching: The House Specialty pan roast includes crawfish, blue crab, clams, mussels and shrimp. And it’s served over a choice of jasmine rice or linguine.

I tend to dive (as it were) right into the seafood, ripping the shells apart, making a general mess, getting splatters all over whatever I was foolish enough to wear. It doesn’t wash out, pretty much ever. Be warned.

Should you prefer gumbo to a pan roast, with its andouille sausage and okra, the choice of seafood is exactly the same — though the flavor is, arguably, even more intense, more down-home Cajun.

And if either of these house specialties seem like more than you want to commit to — well, there’s a lot more menu here. Indeed, despite these being the defining dishes, they actually take up a small portion of the menu.

And the rest of the menu is filled with twists and turns — from Cajun classics on the one hand to oddities like the Chowder Frots on the other. The Frots are a mix of french fries and tater tots, served in a small cast iron pan, drowned under a big splatter and splash of clam chowder, melted cheddar, bacon bits, onions and tomatoes.

It’s spicy, it’s tasty — and it’s really messy, a bit like a home cook deciding to just put everything in the pantry and fridge together and see what happens.

The Hot Cheetos Truffle Mac is a near cousin of the Frots, another dish that seems to have more ingredients than it needs, with the option for crawfish if you want.

And then there are the chicken wings, done enough ways to keep any wing fan well occupied. There are Cajun-spiced wings, fried and crispy, served with the traditional celery, carrots and ranch dipping sauce. There are wings flavored with honey-habanero, dry-rubbed Cajun spice and tangy wet Buffalo spice. They come in orders of six and of 12. I always get the dozen – they travel well, and anyway … why not?

If you need more, there’s bacon-wrapped shrimp. There are shrimp and grits, a proper Low Country creation, down-home as biscuits and gravy. There are jambalaya, a seafood boil, Cajun fries, half a dozen po’boy sandwiches and both bread pudding and beignet for dessert.

If you want to go further afield, there are cioppino and bouillabaisse. If you want to stay in California, there’s a Brussels sprout salad, and a Caesar, both with an option of chicken or salmon — blackened, of course.

Bone Kettle

67 N. Raymond Ave., Old Pasadena >> 626-795-5702, bonekettle.com

The wings at this unique eatery in Old Pasadena are described as “Citrus Brine Chicken Wings.” And like everything served at here, they dazzle with their alternative flavors. These are wings raised to the level of something beyond a bar snack — way beyond! But then, that’s what Bone Kettle is all about.

The elegantly photographed card for Bone Kettle reads “Southeast Asian Kitchen” on one side, and “A family owned Southeast Asian restaurant serving traditional beef bone broth & small plates” on the other. And indeed the emphasis on “The Broth” (as the menu apocalyptically puts it) is well deserved.

It’s an excellent bone broth, as good as bone broth gets, “made by boiling beef in filtered water with onions, garlic, ginger and a ‘specific to Bone Kettle mix’ of dried spices for 36 hours.” Heck, you boil most anything for 36 hours and you’re going to get a pretty rich concoction.

The bone broth is great, no question. But the apps make it that much greater — a rijsttafel without a bowl of rice. I’ve long been sort of nuts for the Indonesian salad called gado-gado — a freeform creation with a name that literally translates as “mix-mix.” It’s usually a wacky toss of vegetables (potatoes, beans, greens, fried tofu, hard-cooked eggs) — a kitchen sink creation held together with peanut sauce, often given a final bit of crunchies on top.

In chef Erwin’s version, it’s made with fried rice cakes, and vegetables chopped very fine, something like the original version of the Cobb salad, in a peanut sauce made even better with tamarind. It’s not like any gado-gado I’ve ever had — and I couldn’t stop eating it.

The citrus-brined chicken wings are chunky and tender, with a good crust and a charred lime on the side, that’s worth a chew — charring the lime changes the flavor muchly.

There’s more lime on the spicy fried oxtail tips, which are a big like rib tips, but meatier, with a penchant for falling off the bone. The mie goreng fried noodles, with a sous-vide egg on top that breaks easily and cooks further in the heat of the noodles, is as essential a dish as the bone broth itself — noodles for those who don’t want the broth.

And then there’s the tar tar — two words, rather than one, prime filet, chopped fine, and fixed with garlic, onions and Indonesian krupuk rice crackers, which give a usually non-textural dish lots of texture.

Oh … and the oxtail dumplings, which feel like a visitation from a dim sum shop. And both the charred broccolini with sesame-hoisin sauce, and the roasted cauliflower, with cucumber-yogurt sauce. Because you really should eat your vegetables.

The Chicken Koop

12824 Hadley St., Whittier >> 562-464-1780, thechickenkoop.com

You’ll find the chicken wings at this chicken intensive poultry casual amidst the roast chicken, the chicken tinga empanadas, the chicken poutine, the loaded chicken nachos, the chicken pozole and the sundry chicken plates and combinations.

The logo at The Koop is a chicken (a kind of angry- looking rooster). There’s a framed sign on one red wall that reads: “I’ve Got OCD (Obsessive Chicken Disorder).” Another reads: “Money Can’t Buy Happiness. But It Can Buy Chicken.”

The bird is the raison d’être of The Koop. And well it should be. Eat here and you may never touch a hunk of KFC’s high-fat, high-sodium product again. That they could cook so many chickens, for so many diners, and every one of them (far as I can tell) is done just right, is a tribute to the Obsessive Chicken Disorder that afflicts the place.

The birds are both crisp on the outside, with a fine layer of mouth-happy spice, and moist on the inside —but without being undercooked, which is no small trick. There are sauces, too, seven of them, including a nice sweet Thai chili sauce, and a very good chimichurri.

But the sauces feel to me like gilding the lily — or in this case, the chicken. I like the birds just as they are. Though the cucumber salad is pretty a pretty good counterpoint, the garlic fries call out to me, the potato salad is good stuff. And who doesn’t like corn on the cob with their chicken, Mexican-style or otherwise?

Most of the dishes come with naan bread, which can easily be confused with pita, and which, with the presence of hummus, nachos, empanadas and the poutine gives the restaurant a surprisingly sense of global chicken-ness. So does the presence of the Cuban-style chicken plate (with rice, black beans and plantains), the Hawaiian-style plate (with white rice, sweet potato fries and maple syrup) and the Canadian-style plate — poutine uber alles.

There’s a secondary obsession here with poutine that does leave my already cholesterol-challenged heart puzzled. For those not familiar with poutine, it’s a French Canadian calorie speedball, made in its basic form of french fries topped with cheese curds (mozzarella in this case), and brown gravy. It can be, and is, tarted up with all sorts of additional ingredients, like curry sauce and chopped hamburger. In this case, the tarting involves the chicken, which is shredded and tossed with the dish.

Under the Roasted Chicken heading, there’s a box that informs you can “upgrade any side to a poutine” for a modest additional fee. Which means, I guess, you can pay extra to substitute poutine for the jalapeño mac and cheese — one cheesy mess for another in my schoolmarmish way of thinking.

One of the great pleasures of the roast chicken at The Koop is its … purity. It is what it is. A fine, tasty, crispy, juicy … roast chicken. Why mess with that? No less an authority than the great chef Jonathan Waxman has said that a roast chicken is “the litmus test for any good chef.” I’ll leave the poutine to those who need the distraction. For me, it’s, “Hey, you gonna eat that wing?”

Merrill Shindler is a Los Angeles-based freelance dining critic Email mreats@aol.com .