An unpopular opinion.
I don’t like chicken sandwiches. There. I’m out. I said it.
I’ve spent much of the past two years or so as a closeted chicken sandwich hater, feigning enthusiasm for Fuku lines, listening to podcasts where people experience the bliss of fried chicken on a bun for the first time, all the while feeling completely apathetic.
Understand that when I say chicken sandwiches I’m talking about a relatively specific thing. I’m talking about the chicken sandwich that Chik-fil-a popularized, the one that David Chang jumped on the bandwagon for, and Shake Shack succumbed to. For the purpose of this discussion, that’s a chicken sandwich. Fried chicken on a bun, maybe some sauce or dressing.
I’m sick of hiding my distaste for it.
To be clear, in my book, you don’t need to justify liking or not liking a food. Typically, there’s no convincing a hater, or a lover, of a particular food that they should change their mind. If they do, they have to come to that point on their own.
But it shouldn’t hurt to explain yourself.
Fried chicken is amazing. Fried chicken is some higher power’s way of taking a consistently satisfying piece of poultry and highlighting its best flavors while adding the missing crunch that would otherwise make chicken a naturally perfect food. Hot chicken (namely from the likes of Peaches Hothouse) takes this idea to an even more transcendent realm, like traveling beyond the heavens, especially for us masochists, to a place where all forms of flavor and texture are satisfied.
Weird, I know, but nonetheless wonderful.
The bane of my existence is a bun. A sad, soft bun, distracting from the crispy, juicy chicken beneath it. Not all buns are terrible. Hamburgers deserve buns, hot dogs deserve buns, grilled chicken even deserves a bun. In these cases a bun brings something more to the table. It ups the diversity of an otherwise relatively unadorned piece of meat. But when it comes to fried chicken, a bun is little more than a cardboard holder for a much greater piece of fried bird.
I get the appeal of the chicken sandwich. It’s portable. It’s simple. It is generally flavorful. But it’s also a detraction. It’s one of the few cases where the addition of an ingredient (the bun — often weak and bland) actually subtracts from the overall flavor available. It blands things, perhaps making them easier on the eyes but less special to the palette. It’s the role of carbs in drowning out a great flavor.
I get it, and it may only be me, but I don’t want to hold my chicken back.
