The Great American Fried Chicken Sandwich

 

The Atlantic - "The Golden Age of the Fried-Chicken Sandwich"

"American eaters have become accustomed to, and expectant of, the opportunity to customize everything. This is why ordering from Starbucks feels like taking the MCAT, and another reason fried chicken is so appealing—it’s a relatively bland meat that takes well to being dressed a gazillion different ways. Case in point: Wingstop’s crispy chicken sandwich is available with a choice of 14 sauces, plus four dips. When it first came out in 2022, the chain sold more than a million sandwiches in six days.

This, really, is the key to fried chicken: It is an ideal blank slate for a novelty-obsessed food culture. Although fried chicken can be an absolute party, texturally speaking, it doesn’t have much to offer, flavorally speaking, at least not without additions. This isn’t a weakness; it’s a strength. “Americans are ornament-, garnish-, kick-it-up-a-notch-oriented,” Freedman told me. (We have become less spice-averse in the past generation or so.) Fried chicken works with all manner of trend and cuisine. Right now you can find a Bolivian fried-chicken sandwich, marinated in South American beer and served with serrano-habanero-chili vinegar, in New York City; a Cambodian one with pickled papaya and long beans in Chicago; and a Thai-inspired one served with your choice of Southeast Asian–style sauces in Glendale, Arizona.

The fried-chicken sandwich is one of the great American inventions—a holy mash-up of tradition and newness, convenience and indulgence, crunchy and soft. It is the perfect food for this culinary moment. But wherever we trend next, it will be there, too, because the fried-chicken sandwich can be whatever we want it to be."