Popeye on top
08 Mar 2020.

So lately I’ve taken to eating chicken sandwiches. Sure, they are loaded with salt and fat and nothing about them is even remotely healthy, but chicken sandwiches have suddenly become the hot new alternative to burgers. By far the best of the lot comes from Popeye’s, whose chicken burger is a thick fillet, coated in crispy somethingorother, nestled in a diamond-shaped bun and garnished with care. It really was fresh and flavourful. 

I found it hard not to want to compare, so I went on a safari of chicken sandwich retailers. Wendy’s offers not one but four variations — spicy, homestyle, barbecue and grilled. They tend to load up on the garnish, like bacon and Jalapeño and avocado and cheese, yet most of those add nothing to the flavour. They also sell nuggets and for those of you who believe that the bun is what makes you fat, they will wrap them in a tortilla. 

Burger King offers two chicken sandwiches for six bucks, but buyer beware. Served on a rectangular bun, the fillet seems to be made up of little chicken bits pressed together. The crust was not crunchy at all, and most of the flavour came from the mayonnaise. I got one Original and one Spicy. The spicy one was the same thing but with horrible sweet barbecue sauce added. Over at KFC, the Big Crunch is a generous fillet with very crispy coating, but it tastes exactly like every other piece of KFC chicken on earth, so salty that I had to drink two large glasses of water afterwards.

McDonald’s has offered the McChicken for decades, and now they offer something new called the Seriously Chicken, whose name is as bad as it is delicious. Loaded with bacon, a food item that adds appeal to everything (you could eat an old shoe if it was wrapped in bacon), the Seriously is the best thing McDonald’s has produced since their Wraps. 

Finally, there is Chick-Fil-A. I had been cautioned by many gay activists to boycott Chick-Fil-A, because head office donates to various anti-gay causes, but I’m no activist. I am, however, a completist, so I had to try one for the sake of this article. What does hate taste like, I wondered? I ordered their most popular menu item, the standard chicken sandwich. The kid who served me was a total queen who either never heard all the controversy, or maybe just really needed a job. Regardless, the sandwich gave me indigestion. Every time I burped, I felt as though I was being punished for being a bad homosexual. 

So the winner is Popeye’s, not just because he has big arm muscles, but also because their chicken sandwich is high quality and hate-free.