KFC finally enlists in the Chicken Sandwich Wars

Posted on Jan 27, 2021

Finally, finally, the Original Chicken Restaurant has gotten on board with the times. It’s not like KFC hasn’t done plenty of other chicken sandwiches in its time - remember the donut sandwich? That was nuts - but they’re doing THE Sandwich. The Chick-fil-A ripoff. The Popeyes Sandwich. The southern-style sandwich with pickles and mayo and a whole tiny little chicken breast that everybody and their fucking mother is going apeshit for and putting on the menus for their fast food restaurants now.

So what took you, KFC? You won us back, and it took you this long to get The Sandwich on your menu? We’ve been waiting to write this article since, we got it written down here on our article notes, May 26th of 2020, and only just now you’ve gotten this bad boy out nationwide. What’s up with that? You guys are slipping, or something? I remember the old KFC commercials with the toon Colonel who was making fun of the “Burger Boys” for their inferior sandwiches and bragging about KFC sammies. Now who’s the sandwich dorks, huh? You guys let Popeyes beat you to the punch on this one? 

But, come on, it’s KFC. They’ve had enough knocks in their life. They’re the ancient prizefighter with a tremor, rail-thin, insisting they’ve still got one more fight in ‘em. But you know this old dude could still whoop your ass if you pushed him in a corner. Well, KFC seems plenty pushed into a corner to us. Can they keep up with the big dogs now, or do they deserve their space at the bottom?

The KFC sandwich is identical in composition to every other The Sandwich: chicken breast, mayonnaise that comes in plain or spicy, a few pickles. The simplicity of these sandwiches is where their elegance lies. Anybody can do it - even you at home! Just pick up a bag of frozen breaded chicken breasts, or fry your own at home. It’s fun and easy! But for those of us who don’t have the time or energy to fry up our own chicken, the restaurants of the world provide.

And I mean, really, what took KFC so long to provide? Well, they’ve had the sandwich, it just wasn’t on your local KFC’s menu. Or maybe it was, if you lived in Florida. KFC was testing this stuff in the Orlando area for goodness knows how long, and we guess they had been really wanting to get it right. In fact, you might not even have this sandwich in your area until the end of February 2021 - they’re doing some kind of staggered release nationwide! Why? It’s a chicken sandwich! Everybody knows this! You don’t need to build hype up for this. It’s the same thing as everywhere else.

And we waited. We waited for months. Actually, we did already eat KFC’s chicken sandwich, or at least a version of it: their doughnut sandwich. And it was okay! Well, it was a sticky disgusting mess, but we’re the kind of people who like sticky disgusting messes. But the important part is that the patty was fine. It was definitely loaded with MSG, but MSG is good! It does taste good! The patty was soft and kind of pillowy, but it was at least as good as any other premium chicken sandwich a place like Wendy’s or McDonald’s would offer. So what’s the point of introducing a new sandwich? Just to keep up with the Joneses?

That’s exactly it. You want to know how this sandwich was? It was almost identical to the Popeyes sandwich. Same generic bun, same generic pickles, same crunchy chicken breast. The big difference was the spicy mayo. It kind of tasted like buffalo sauce, with that Frank’s Red Hot tang, and was a lot spicier than Popeyes spicy mayo. Popeyes tastes like “seasoned” mayo, and this one is actually a “hot” mayonnaise. It reminded us of the sauce that Burger King would put on its Spicy Chicken Jrs. 

The patty was definitely noticeably different, but not by much. It had that same MSG burn as the original patty, but was much crispier and crunchier. It’s the same exact texture as the Popeyes patty. If you blindfolded us, we don’t know if we could easily tell. When you focus, you can taste the KFC flavors, but otherwise the only real marker of taste is the spicy mayo. So, if you want a buffalo chicken sandwich, give this one a shot. 

Man, looking at it now, there really isn’t a lot to say about this sandwich. It’s The Sandwich. It doesn’t take any risks, it doesn’t do anything extraordinary - it is a bandwagon jumping move extraordinaire. It’s good, but there was almost zero chance of it being bad. We really wish somebody would do something weird with these chicken sandwiches! At least put some barbecue sauce on them, or some other topping, or something! The existence of The Sandwich represents a major flattening of the fast food world. When everybody sells the same sandwich, there’ll be no reason to pick any one restaurant over the other. And maybe that’s the point.

Categories: food

Tagged: chicken chicken sandwich kfc spicy