‘I don’t like thick chicken’: A New Yorker’s review of Charlotte chicken tenders
New Yorkers aren’t exactly known for keeping their food opinions to themselves. Ask one where to get the best pizza, bagel or bacon, egg and cheese, and you’re likely to get a passionate answer.
I figured the same would apply to chicken tenders.
One of my editors, Heidi, saw a video from “Top Chef” judges in Charlotte doing a blind taste test of chicken tenders from local fast food restaurants. It was her idea to replicate that, but since I’m too familiar with the city’s fried poultry, I enlisted the help of one of my colleagues.
Desiree Mathurin (Dez for short) is The Charlotte Observer’s growth and development reporter and a New Yorker who loves chicken tenders. We picked up tenders from Zaxbys, Publix, Bojangles and Cook Out, removed any identifying packaging and served them to her one at a time without revealing where they came from.
Before we started, though, she wanted to establish her credentials.
“If I could have a death row meal, what would it be?” she asked her mom on the phone.
“Like, I’m about to die, and I need a meal, what would you give me?” she clarified.
“Chicken nuggets and french fries,” her mom responded.
She was the perfect candidate.
Zaxbys
“These are a little cold,” Dez told me as she grabbed the first tender.
She wasn’t wrong — the chicken had been sitting out for roughly 20 minutes before we started.
“This is good,” she said after the first bite. “That might be Publix. That’s a fresh chicken tendy.”
“It’s not too breaded,” she continued. “It’s a little dry. It could use some sauce.”
I wouldn’t know since I’ve never had tenders from Zaxbys without their signature Zax Sauce. I’m still not sure what’s in it, though, and I don’t want to know.
“It doesn’t have a chicken taste to it,” she said. “I don’t know if that makes sense to people, but you know how chicken can taste like chicken?”
The fact that the tenders didn’t taste like chicken was concerning, but it also made me think those probably wouldn’t end up being her favorite.
Cook Out
“That has to be Cook Out because it’s frozen,” Dez said after the first bite.
I was offended, but Cook Out chicken tenders have been my go-to order there since I can remember, so I asked her to explain further.
“The breading is really thick, and there’s not that much chicken,” she said.
“So the bread-to-chicken ratio is off?” I asked.
“I wouldn’t say off, because I do like a breaded chicken tendy,” she said. “I do like that it’s still crunchy, even though it is a little lukewarm. But it just gives frozen.”
“Do you think it’d be better with some sauce?” I questioned.
“Actually, I could eat that with no sauce.”
Bojangles
“Oh, look at this little flavoring right here,” Dez said, pointing to the Cajun seasoning on the tender. “Is it spicy?”
She guessed incorrectly that the chicken was from Publix, so I asked her to explain why.
“That’s really good,” she said. “It has more of a real chicken taste — I like the pepper, and it has a really good flavor. Nice spicy little kick. Super crispy, and it wasn’t dry like the first one, or artificial-tasting like the second one.”
Then she mentioned her disdain for “thick chicken,” which was confusing to me. Wouldn’t thin chicken have less meat?
“I’m taking the skinnier pieces because I don’t like thick chicken,” she said.
Publix
“I don’t think I’m going to like these, because I don’t really like thick chicken in tender format,” Dez said about the Publix tenders. “Sometimes I have weird meat aversions. If the chicken is too thick, I’m gonna be like, ‘It’s not cooked,’ even though I’m sure it is.”
“So you like thin chicken?” I asked.
“I do like thin chicken tenders, so I try to take the thinnest of them all.”
Before trying a piece, she pointed out how the breading was falling off, showing the intense whiteness of the chicken.
“That tastes like an actual piece of chicken,” she said. “It tastes like rotisserie chicken.
“It’s lacking a little flavor,” she continued. “I wish we had an air fryer in here so we could heat it up again to make it a bit more crispy. But I would say out of all of these, that was the realest piece of chicken I’ve had.
The winner
In the end, Dez chose Bojangles as her favorite, saying the flavor is what stood out the most.
“I’ve had Bojangles before, and I didn’t like it — I tossed it as soon as I got it,” she explained. “But that was really flavorful. It was really good. Good flavor, nice spice, very good peppery taste and it was really crunchy.”
“Now, I might be a Bojangles fan.”
