Bonnie Lee’s Fried Chicken

Bonnie Lee’s Fried Chicken has operated on 13th Street in St. Cloud since 1983, when Dave and Jan Smith opened the restaurant and named it after their daughter. More than four decades later, the business is still serving the same core menu that built its reputation: fried chicken alongside classic Southern sides like sweet potato fries and coleslaw, cooked in a small, unpretentious space that has changed little in style even as the surrounding shopping center has turned over other tenants many times.

The restaurant sits inside a Save A Lot shopping center along 13th Street, which doubles as U.S. Highway 192 through this stretch of St. Cloud, near the corner of Indiana Avenue. That location puts it in the same general commercial strip as several other longtime St. Cloud food businesses, though Bonnie Lee’s has carved out its own identity as a go-to spot for fried chicken rather than competing directly with the barbecue and Asian restaurants nearby.

Customers who find it describe an experience that goes beyond the food itself. One review recounted being new to St. Cloud, receiving a flyer for the restaurant, and being made to feel welcome on a first visit, a small detail that speaks to the kind of family-run hospitality a business tends to build only after decades in the same neighborhood. That word-of-mouth reputation, built flyer by flyer and visit by visit rather than through marketing budgets, is typical of long-running independent restaurants that never expanded beyond a single location.

Hours are limited compared to a full-service restaurant, running Tuesday through Saturday from 4 in the afternoon until 9 at night, with the restaurant closed Sunday and Monday. That schedule suggests a kitchen built around dinner service specifically, cooking fresh batches of chicken through the evening rather than trying to cover breakfast or lunch crowds the way a diner would.

Bonnie Lee’s accepts cash, checks, and major credit cards, a small but useful detail for anyone stopping by expecting a cash-only counter given the restaurant’s age and modest storefront. Forty-three years in business makes Bonnie Lee’s one of the older continuously operating independent restaurants in St. Cloud, predating much of the modern development along 13th Street and outlasting other competitors that have opened and closed in the same shopping centers over the decades. For anyone tracing the city’s food history, it remains a working link back to St. Cloud’s food scene in the early 1980s.