Raising Cane's is a fast food chain that serves only one main dish:
Chicken Fingers. The battered and deep-fried chicken strips are accompanied by crinkle-cut fries, coleslaw, and Cane's Sauce for dipping. That pretty much covers the chain's menu.
When ordering all you're left to choose is how many chicken strips you want. I picked up
The Box combo, which yields 4 strips, sides, and a 21-ounce drink. It's their most popular order and costs
$6.79.
At first glance, the breading of the Chicken Fingers reminded me of
Popeyes a little, but the strips themselves were noticeably plumper. Like any other chicken strip, they're cut from the breast, but were remarkably juicy and flavorful. The breading was crispy and lightly seasoned; these are meant to be dipped.
For dipping, there's one option: Cane's Sauce. It appears to be a Thousand Island variant. It starts out with a balance of sweet and tangy, and then comes some black pepper notes, followed by a deep-rich hit of savory that must be the sauce's secret. It goes really well with the chicken and fries. I didn't try dipping the toast in them, but their website recommends doing so.
The Texas Toast is buttered and lightly sprinkled with garlic salt. It's a really soft, squishy bread that reminds me a bit of King's Hawaiian bread. It could stand to be a little toastier, but I enjoyed it very much.
The fries were well-prepared and pretty good. The crinkle cut leaves a bit more crispy edges as well as potato flavor. I especially like that they were only lightly salted. Off the top of my head,
Chick-fil-A is the only other major chain that salts their fries in such a moderate fashion.
Coleslaw is nice: the mayo isn't too heavy and there's a nice sweetness. The cabbage was fresh and had that slight bit of bitterness to it. I'm not a huge fan of coleslaw though.
Overall, Raising Cane's menu/combo is all pretty quality stuff and well worth the money. I especially liked the Chicken Fingers, the sauce, and the Texas Toast.
If you like Raising Cane's, you need to try Zaxby's. They have everything Cane's sells and more plus they're chicken blows Cane's out of the water.
ReplyDeleteThe only bad thing is there fries don't do well when it's to go. There's so much condensation in the box that the fries lose all if any crisp they had. I do love there tenders and there sauce is really good.
ReplyDeleteI saw a billboard for this place the other day, but I totally forgot about it until now. Apparently there's two locations in town, but they're both pretty far from me so I doubt I'll be checking it out anytime soon.
ReplyDeleteThey seem a bit bare bones anyway. The food that I like looks good, but I hate coleslaw and I'm surprised they have no other options for sides (unless they let you double down on fries or something, like how Long John Silver's will let you replace coleslaw with extra hushpuppies). it seems even more pointless to go all the way out there to get a meal I'm not even going to finish completely.
They do let you substitute the coleslaw for extra fries or an extra texas toast.
ReplyDeleteHaha, I ever find myself near one I'll have to try it, but I don't think they have them on the West Coast.
ReplyDeleteDevin, I mirror you exactly; I'm in St. Louis and there are two in the area but pretty far away, and it seems like they're a one-trick pony. I don't like cole slaw either and I prefer dark meat to white, and frozen food service fries suck, so I can't myself visiting Raising Cane's
ReplyDeleteThanks for the heads up, that's definitely good to know. I still doubt I'd try it out though unless they built one closer to me.
ReplyDelete