Claudia Sanders Dinner House

Shelbyville, Kentucky

Colonel Sanders really cared about his chicken. But he was old, and in 1964 he sold Kentucky Fried Chicken to a couple of corporate suits -- who promptly corrupted his secret chicken-and-gravy recipe. Cussing-mad, the Colonel and his wife, Claudia, opened a rival restaurant, The Colonel's Lady, in 1968. It served the Colonel's original-recipe Kentucky Fried Chicken as part of a full-service dinner menu.

KFC sued the Colonel. The Colonel counter-sued KFC -- and began attacking KFC food in the press. Anxious to end the bad publicity, KFC agreed to pay the Colonel $1 million if he would change the name of his restaurant. He agreed, the restaurant became Claudia Sanders Dinner House, and when the Colonel died in 1980, KFC was free to do whatever it wanted with his chicken.

Claudia died in 1996 and the restaurant burned down in 1999 -- but its chicken was so popular that the restaurant was rebuilt and has remained open ever since. Although it can't say what everybody knows, it's the only place in the world where you can eat Kentucky Fried Chicken the way the Colonel meant it to be.