It’s no secret that chicken is a widely enjoyed thing in America. I’d be willing to bet that everyone reading this article has eaten a piece of chicken at some point in their lives, regardless of whether or not they are restricted to a non meat diet or anything of that sort. Meat is almost as commonly accepted as a basic necessity for life as water or air, but chicken gets a little bit more special treatment as opposed to steak, due to it not being a red meat, which if consumed in excess can lead to things like type two diabetes, coronary heart disease, strokes, cancer, etc. Even if you exclude the fact that it is considered to be a bit healthier for you, chicken is tasty, and it’s pretty apparent that the average American will consume anything so long as it tastes good, regardless of if it’s good for them or not.
Despite this though, many people don’t seem to have a common consensus on what major restaurant is the best and many opinions are formed while not being completely informed, and oftentimes biased. Obviously, it would be pretty difficult, and cost inefficient, for someone to go to every single fast food restaurant, and give a good comparison of them, so I made it my business to go to the major chicken chains, see which one of them is the best, and then give a definitive statement on the best fast food chicken that’s available.
The three chains that are under review are Popeye’s, Chick-Fil-A, and Cane’s. To make it a fair comparison, I ordered the same thing off of the menu of each restaurant, the chicken tenders meal, considering it’s just chicken with some sauce on the side. I’ll also discuss some other details about the restaurant, but the main thing is the chicken.
The first location I went to was Cane’s. I went to the one located by the North Riverside mall, so it’s typically pretty crowded. Cane’s, between the three chains, is the one I’ve eaten the least, so I’m not as familiar with it, however I would say that the chicken itself is probably the best out of the three. I ordered the typical combo box, which nets you four tenders, fries, a piece of bread, sauce, and a serving of coleslaw, which I substituted for more sauce. The tenders themselves are very generously sized, and they also taste pretty good. A lot of people say that Cane’s chicken is carried by the sauce, and I can understand that, it’s not like they are serving gourmet chicken to you or anything, but oftentimes they say that the chicken is unseasoned which warrants needing the sauce with it. I object to that because when you bread up chicken, you don’t go crazy with the seasoning anyways, exception being if you’re getting really bougie with it, but typically you aren’t. Also the sauce is served with the meal, as it’s supposed to be part of the meal, not just something to have on the side, that’s why it just comes with it. You’re supposed to take the chicken, pull off a piece of toast, and then dip both of them into the sauce. Even without the sauce, it tastes just like how you’d want it to – like chicken – what more could you really ask for? Aside from the chicken, the rest of the meal is good, the toast is good, the fries are good, the box combo is eleven dollars, it’s a good deal.
Popeye’s is next, and I have conflicted feelings about it. Everyone’s had their chicken sandwich, and it’s superb, anything you’d want in a chicken sandwich it’s got. However, this isn’t about the sandwich, because if it was, there’d be no point in me writing this because Popeye’s undoubtedly has the best sandwich. I never had the tenders at popeyes and to be blunt, the tenders don’t live up to the precedent set by the sandwich. The tenders are actually a little bit larger than that at Cane’s, however this is a prime example of bigger not always being better. The tenders still taste good, but they don’t taste as good as Cane’s, and since I went there with a friend, I was able to try both the spicy and regular tenders. I don’t really have a great way to describe it, because at the end of the day they both taste like chicken, but the Popeye’s tenders just don’t feel like they are at the same level as Cane’s. Obviously they don’t have Cane’s sauce so I had honey mustard, and that sort of contributes to flavor a lot, but I tried all the locations’ chicken without any sauces, and at the end of the day, Popeye’s fell a little bit short of Cane’s. The five piece combo is about $11.99, so the price is pretty much the same as Cane’s, and you get one more tender for a miniscule price increase, so you can’t go wrong with this either.
Lastly, we have Chick-Fil-A, which I would say is by far the worst between the three. First of all, you only get a maximum of four tenders, which wouldn’t be an issue if it wasn’t for the fact that they are exponentially smaller than those of the previous two chains. Second of all, the prices at Chick-Fil-A are more expensive than the former two chains, as the price of the chicken tender meal is $14.75, which is roughly a five dollar increase if you take into account tax on the final price. When I went to Chick-Fil-A this past Saturday, the total price of everything was about $46 for three people. At that point you might as well just go to an actual restaurant and get a grilled chicken breast or something, because $46 to serve three people fast food is a little egregious. I haven’t touched much on the actual establishments themselves because there isn’t much to say with the two previously mentioned chains, outside of Cane’s being crowded at times, but actually eating inside of Chick-Fil-A, at least the one on LaGrange road, isn’t very fun. It has a small jungle gym in the corner of it, so as a result there’s a bunch of toddlers there, and they tend to cry and scream very loudly, and they don’t stop, and that can be very irritating. The last major thing with Chick-Fil-A’s chicken is that it also doesn’t taste as great as its predecessor, but the food itself still tastes pretty decent.
The final verdict is that Cane’s is the best fast food chicken you can get in my opinion. A combination of good taste, good serving size, agreeable pricing and just an overall good bang for your buck makes it the best option of the three.
