Best new chicken restaurant

Which is your favorite?

  • PDQ

    Votes: 4 4.3%
  • Raisin' Cane's

    Votes: 71 77.2%
  • Slim Chickens

    Votes: 17 18.5%

  • Total voters
    92
Cane's must be better in IA than in KC. I've had it twice here and have zero desire to go back. Slim wins between the two. Strouds is a step above both and it gets a lot of love locally, but Gus's crushes them all.

I'm not sure if it's still there, but there used to be some place in Kingsley that had the best broasted chicken. It was dark and dismal inside, but it added nicely to the shame of gourging yourself on crispy goodness.
Same with the Chicago area. I’ve had Cane’s a couple of times trying to give it the benefit of the doubt, since so many people I know love it. I’m not saying it is bad, but I have no desire to eat it again. Worst part is, we got a PDQ here in Schaumburg and the whole family loved it. They closed up though. Not sure why, PDQ was always busy.
 
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Canes sucks. If you need sauce to make your chicken good then you don’t have good chicken and I’ll die on that hill.
I disagree. I find that the chicken at Cane's is almost always perfectly cooked. Most other places it's almost always overcooked. Yes it's a little plain without the sauce so if you don't like their sauce I can understand how you don't like Cane's.
 
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I really really dislike Cane's, mostly because I don't like the Cane's sauce, leaving me with bland chicken because they don't have any other options.

Slim Chickens is pretty good! I've had that in OK before. They have a lot of sauces which I like.

My personal favorites are Bojangles and Zaxby's.

You have to go down south for good chicken places.

I was kind of shocked they don’t have a bbq sauce like every other nuggets or chicken strips offering in history has. I’m not a fan of variations on mayo. Id have liked the chicken w bbq. The fries were irredeemable to me, just bad. Not good one all you have is chicken and fries.

It is a lot of food for the $, at least in my area. I wonder if that’s part of the appeal.
 
I don't really compare Canes with Chic Fil A..... Canes sells chicken fingers and nothing else. Chic Fil A sells sandwiches, salads, nuggets, etc.

That being said, I eat at both places occasionally. Not a huge fan of Canes... they are decent at best, but mostly average. I don't like Canes sauce or the 45 minute wait in the drive thru most nights. I prefer Chic Fil A more because of faster (and better) service and much better variety of sauces. I think their chicken tastes better, too.

Not judging anyone's preferences... eat what you like best!
 
I was kind of shocked they don’t have a bbq sauce like every other nuggets or chicken strips offering in history has. I’m not a fan of variations on mayo. Id have liked the chicken w bbq. The fries were irredeemable to me, just bad. Not good one all you have is chicken and fries.

It is a lot of food for the $, at least in my area. I wonder if that’s part of the appeal.
There is a reason that crappy buffet restaurants dominate the market in a lot of areas. Granted, they were aswesome when our kids were little. Didn't have to wait for meals to arrive, kids got to choose whatever they wanted, but once they developed taste, I've never hit another buffet.

I think you are right, America's taste buds seem to be directed at how full I can get, not how good the food really is.
 
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Canes would easily win, but would it kill them to season their chicken? It's so bland. Brine it or soak it in seasoned buttermilk or add seasoning to the dredge, or something, because even though it's cooked very well, the meat is just bland.

Don't get me wrong, it's not terrible. But it's just so easily remedied that I have to imagine that the owners of the company are doing it on purpose. Maybe they all injured their tongues in a nasty, cheese grating accident some time back, and now they require their food to be super bland.

It's so close to being fantastic.

They remind me a lot of Outback and Texas Roadhouse steaks. Very little flavor in order to be the safe option and not offend anybody’s taste buds. Makes for an acceptable but not great meal.
 
I would take Taco Johns chicken soft shell meal over any of this. MMMM ole's

I should open a franchise here, just so I can eat...
 
But brines, breadings, and seasonings are totally okay :jimlad:
Absolutely. There's a difference between cooking something well and seasoning it well.

You could expertly grill a hamburger using the best blend of beef, to a perfect medium rare, but if you don't season it, it's going to underwhelm.

The technique can be flawless and still produce a substandard product.
 
Absolutely. There's a difference between cooking something well and seasoning it well.

You could expertly grill a hamburger using the best blend of beef, to a perfect medium rare, but if you don't season it, it's going to underwhelm.

The technique can be flawless and still produce a substandard product.

If I had to for some reason, I could eat Chic fil A chicken and fries with no drink and no sauce and carry on just fine.

I think I'd probably choke if I tried to eat Canes with no sauce and no drink. I didn't like the one sauce and I was forced to take a drink of soda after every bite...which may be why they have one gigantic size drink now that I think about it. It's really a one sauce restaurant from what I'm gathering and from my days of waiting tables I think that actually is a money maker because I remember a lot of customers in Iowa in the 90s were basically just looking for ways to consume ranch dressing.
 
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Absolutely. There's a difference between cooking something well and seasoning it well.

You could expertly grill a hamburger using the best blend of beef, to a perfect medium rare, but if you don't season it, it's going to underwhelm.

The technique can be flawless and still produce a substandard product.
This is especially the case with chicken, which doesn't have a lot of flavor on its own.
 
Absolutely. There's a difference between cooking something well and seasoning it well.

You could expertly grill a hamburger using the best blend of beef, to a perfect medium rare, but if you don't season it, it's going to underwhelm.

The technique can be flawless and still produce a substandard product.

That was exactly my point. :shrug:

Some things need sauce. Like, a lot of foods.
 
That was exactly my point. :shrug:

Some things need sauce. Like, a lot of foods.
But chicken doesn't have to be one of them. With a bit of seasoning in the form of brining you can add a ton of flavor without adding sauce. One of my family's favorite meals is grilled chicken legs that I've brined in pickle juice for 24 hours. No bbq sauce or ranch or anything else is needed on those and they're massively flavorful.
 
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There is a reason that crappy buffet restaurants dominate the market in a lot of areas. Granted, they were aswesome when our kids were little. Didn't have to wait for meals to arrive, kids got to choose whatever they wanted, but once they developed taste, I've never hit another buffet.

I think you are right, America's taste buds seem to be directed at how full I can get, not how good the food really is.
I stay away from buffets for the most part. Exceptions:

1) breakfast buffet at a hotel

2) a familiar restaurant that only does a buffet every once in a while. There's a pizza place by my house that will do a buffet once a week and they are constantly bringing out new pizzas.

It's not necessarily that I don't trust the people cooking the food, but there are a lot of customers that are disgusting or have kids that are. I don't want them near anything I'm eating.
 
But chicken doesn't have to be one of them. With a bit of seasoning in the form of brining you can add a ton of flavor without adding sauce. One of my family's favorite meals is grilled chicken legs that I've brined in pickle juice for 24 hours. No bbq sauce or ranch or anything else is needed on those and they're massively flavorful.

I'm with you more on chicken than burgers for this.

Good beef can really stand on its own without much more than salt\pepper, and I feel like some people go overboard seasoning it taking away from the flavor of the meat.
 
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