Popeye´s Chicken Sandwich Review

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Evan Palmer, Entertainment Editor

In early August, Popeye’s Louisiana Kitchen, a restaurant famous for their delicious crispy chicken, diabetic sweet tea, and lethally dry biscuits, partnered with Sweet Dixie Kitchen, a Southern California restaurant that had been in some trouble for selling Popeye’s chicken out of their restaurant during brunch, to release their own chicken sandwich. Of course, as Americans, we raided every Popeye ́s for their chicken fillet sandwich as soon as humanly possible and, as a result, most locations were sold out within weeks of its release. This phenomenon infected the Internet like influenza during the winter months with memes (how I initially learned about the sandwich), news articles (such as this one), and actual complaints on social media such as Twitter.

Of course, many people, such as myself, who hadn’t had so much as a breath of the scent of the fabled chicken sandwiches, were left to wonder what was so great about them. Last Saturday, I sat out on a quest to Covington in search of the Popeye’s chicken sandwich that was spoken of in the legends. My quest wasn´t exactly epic, it mainly consisted of a 50 minute drive, at least a quarter of which was spent behind a probably 130-year-old woman who couldn’t be bothered to do so much as half of the speed limit. The other part of the quest was sitting in line at Popeye ́s for literally two and a half hours, one of which I slept through. Finally, we got up to the window and the woman handed out the chicken sandwich in a bag that looked golden in the lighting of the sunset (keep in mind that we left Dyersburg at about 3:30). It was finally my turn to try the seemingly mythical chicken sandwich.

People had been going diagnosably insane for this chicken sandwich so I was left to wonder what was so great about it. What kind of drugs would they put in this sandwich to make a man pull out a gun in a Southeast Houston Popeye ́s? For me to have to wait for this sandwich like I did, this sandwich should be magical. This sandwich should change my life. With all the fuss over this sandwich, it better make me feel like I´m swimming without having to hold my breath. The sandwich consisted of a chicken fillet, some pickles, and some mayonnaise. I ordered the spicy version so mine had some hot sauce on there too but it only has that if you order it. So finally I bit into it to try it and maybe see what could possess a man to sue a chain restaurant over running out of chicken.

Yes, it was good. It was delicious. The mayo and the pickles complimented each other so well and the flavor seemed to rain down on my tongue like it was wearing suede shoes outside. The fried chicken that only Popeye’s can seem to do right served as music for the dance party of flavors in my mouth. Then the hot sauce provided a kick that I personally require to eat almost everything. I didn´t even wanna drink my soda because I didn´t wanna wash out the taste of the sandwich. To be honest, though, apart from tasting what cooked angels possibly taste like, I was pretty disappointed. Yes, it tasted like how music sounds, but it was not worth the three and a half hours out of my day I spent to acquire it. It’s not worth pulling a gun on the employees like that guy in Houston did. It’s not worth suing a $1.8 billion dollar company who could spare a few thousand on an overpowered lawyer. I would say its not worth the memes but I would never complain about new memes. It is definitely not worth all the complaining over Twitter and all the near-riots that have broken out over it. So yes, the Popeye’s chicken sandwich is delicious and contains a lush arrangement of flavours that all go well together, but no, it is not worth all the problems and drama surrounding it and it does not reach the high expectations set by all the attention focused on it.