Burger King's Ch'King Sandwich
by Mike “Cha-Ching” Lunsford, GGR’s Editor-In-Chief
The Chicken Sandwich Wars are now definitely a thing. Before it was just a police action, perhaps a humanitarian effort, but now it’s full-scale war. Popeyes fired the first shot. McDonalds redressed an older recipe they had that was surprisingly good. KFC is involved. And now, the King weighs in. Not the Chicken King though: the BURGER KING. Is he out of his element? Is this a realm in which he has no power?
Burger King has never been an entity to just sit back and play it safe. And so the King joins the match.
Before I go any further I want to address why the Chicken Sandwich War is in full swing. It’s been bubbling for a few years now, ever since Popeyes introduced their sandwich and threw shade at a certain bigoted, closed-on-Sundays, chicken sandwich joint. Because someone was going directly after the chicken sandwich titan, and that someone wasn’t dressing up their hate as “Christian values,” the people rejoiced. The backlash became too much for Chick-Fil-A, and not long ago they announced they were “changing their donation strategy” and stopped donating to anti-LGBTQ charities…for like a week. Then they were back on their bullshit almost immediately by finding a loophole: Chick-Fil-A wouldn’t donate to hate groups, but the owner Dan Cathy would just keep on doing it! And in May of 2021, ol’ Dan doubled down (no pun intended) and donated some of his sickeningly large fortune to a group trying to derail the Equality Act. What does that act say exactly? That lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender people should have protections from discrimination at the federal level. HE’S AGAINST THAT. It’s not a misunderstanding any more. It’s not a “live and let live” thing any more. This is a clear-cut of an example of an individual who represents a company pretending to be taking the moral high ground when in actuality he’s using religion to excuse bigotry and hate. Furthermore, this is a particularly egregious example of this as people will defend Chick-Fil-A by saying “but their employees are so nice though!” It’s the perfect deflection to any criticism of their stances on their hate-dressed-up-as-religion. In the past, there may have been some wiggle room for people who spent their money at Chik-Fil-A. No longer. Read the Esquire piece if you want more info that may turn your stomach. That being said, this will be the last time I mention their name in an article.
Now, moving forward while also going back to the beginning, there are a bevy of fast food restaurants who are trying to steal the crown from Bigot Chicken Inc. Burger King has decided they waited long enough to introduce a new entry in this contest. Chicken sandwiches are nothing new to BK; they’ve had many variations of one for years. In fact, I’ve always enjoyed their long, skinny Original Chicken sandwich. It’s an underrated classic, easily on par with McDonald’s McChicken.
They also tinkered with a more traditional style fried chicken sandwich called the Tendercrisp. Shit, Darius Rucker even sang the dang Tendercrisp theme song! GET IT, HOOTIE!
The problem with both of these sandwiches (yes, even the one with a friggin’ theme song) is that they weren’t iconic. They weren’t next level. The Original Chicken sandwich is good…but not great. Same with the Tendercrisp. It was just meh - except when they did the Chicken Parmesan Tendercrisp (but that’s unfair because nothing beats a chicken parmesan sandwich).
So what is the King of Burgers to do? More creepy commercials with a dude in a mask who looks like the lead in a horror flick? Well, yeah obviously. But ALSO, a brand new, extra crunchy, extra crispy fried chicken sandwich!
What else could they possibly do to turn the tide away from Dan Cathy and his Technicolor Dreamcoat of Hatred and Bigotry? Hit ‘em where it hurts: Burger King announced that it will donate 40 cents to the Human Rights Campaign for every one of their new sandwiches sold in June. Popeyes, KFC, and McDonald’s don’t do that. Well played, BK! And what is the name of this new chicken sandwich, for which BK sends a donation to the largest LGBTQ charity in the country? The Ch’ King.
That is some clever naming: a portmanteau of chicken, cha-ching, and King. ^chef’s kiss^ Very nice Burger King.
But let’s stop the bojangling and get to the point: how does it taste? Ultimately, all the advertising and PR moves won’t help if this sandwich is nasty. For the taste test phase of this article I brought along my ride-or-die: Jax. I also brought in an outside consultant. This person has a much more refined palate and food sensibilities than the human garbage disposals of Jax and myself: my wife Sandy.
Whether this sandwich was amazing or just average, I’m eating the whole damn thing. Same with Jax. Sandy is the true benchmark of quality. If it sucks, she won’t finish it (which just means I get her leftovers lol).
She destroyed hers! I also put a hurting on mine, and so did Jax. IN FACT this is what the boy had to say:
This is the best fast food chicken sandwich. Unless we’re counting Planet Hollywood’s chicken sandwich…
(“we’re not, dude”)
Okay, fine…then THIS is the best fried chicken sandwich we’ve had so far. It was crispier, I liked the spicy sauce on it and the mayo-sauce thing was good, too.
The Ch’King comes in 3 varieties: the traditional comes with pickles and a mayo based sauce; the spicy which is tossed in a spicy glaze and has the aforementioned pickles and mayo sauce; and the deluxe which can be traditional or spicy and has lettuce and tomato on it as well. We all got the spicy variants, with yours truly being the only deluxe.
I made it clear I will never be spending my money at Dan Cathy’s Bigot Chicken Rodeo again, but I’m not going to lie and say I’ve never had it or that I never enjoyed it. I did on both counts. But here’s the deal: the Ch’King is a clear competitor to that pretending-to-be-Christian-values-establishment’s offerings, and Burger King’s is far superior on many counts. The chicken is crispier, the sauce is spicier, the lettuce is crisper, and the tomatoes are actually good tomatoes - not the gelatinous goo Hate-Fil-A puts on their sandwiches. The only thing that didn’t work was the fries, but that’s consistent with Burger King. They’ve never had good fries, and honestly the waffle fries at Hobby Lobby’s Chicken Division were never amazing either. BK dominated this head to head match-up.
Looking at the other competitors we’ve tried thus far, Burger King’s is the best fried chicken sandwich hands down. Popeyes pulls up in second, and KFC is a distant third. Now, it is worth mentioning how good the french fries from KFC and Popeyes were…but we’ll save that for another article. In the end, you can have an awesome fried chicken sandwich at a lot of different fast food joints and not be supporting some ugly bullshit.
There’s no longer a grey area with Jerk-Fil-A’s stance on how they feel about the LGBTQ community. Honestly, there really never was. Any lip service they gave to changing their stances was just to potentially tamp down any backlash they may receive. It’s not worth it to line their pockets so they can fund charities that do things like conversion therapy. And just speaking of the quality of the food, there are now other chains that have equally good or better options. Burger King can also call themselves the Chicken King.