I’ve heard about Raising Cane’s chicken fingers for a few years now, but there was never a location near me until this week. A new location opened right around the corner from my house on election night and since fast food seems to be Donald Trump’s favorite food, we decided it would be a perfect night to try it out.
Don’t worry, that will be the only mention of politics in this post. This site is for food, but I just had to get one little jab in there (even though that’s probably the only thing Trump and I would agree on… I love fast food).
Anyways…
So Raising Cane’s is all about chicken fingers. That’s essentially all they have on their menu. Their different combo meals come with a set number of chicken fingers, a side of coleslaw, a side of texas toast, fries and a drink. The only other option is to get the sandwich, which is just chicken fingers on a bun with lettuce and the Cane’s sauce on the sandwich… So if you’re looking for something other than chicken fingers, this probably isn’t the restaurant you want to try.
It’s definitely right up my kids’ alley though, since it seems like all they eat is chicken nuggets/fingers. And while I do enjoy them occasionally, they aren’t my first choice when getting fast food (or food in general). I’ll usually opt for a burger instead.
But since Raising Cane’s only has chicken fingers, and we’d heard really good things about it, we knew we had to try it.
Raising Cane’s Chicken Fingers Taste Test
Obviously there’s no reason to go through what each of us ordered since it’s just chicken fingers, fries, coleslaw and texas toast. And while I did not try the texas toast or the coleslaw, I was excited to dig into the chicken fingers and fries. Although I was pretty disappointed in their pop… They use those really small ice cubes and basically fill the entire cup with ice before filling it with pop, which leads to a watered down drink and barely any pop… Which I guess is fine for me since I try to limit the amount of pop I drink, but when I do drink it I don’t want it watered down, I want it to taste as good as McDonald’s Coke, but I think that’s impossible.
But aside from that issue, at first glance everything looked good and smelled good, so it was time to dig in and see how it tasted.
After the first couple bites of the chicken fingers I have to admit I was a bit disappointed. I think they might have been hyped up a bit too much in my mind from reviews I’ve read and friends that have had it before, but I wasn’t super impressed. They’re good, don’t get me wrong, but they just taste like normal, boring, chicken fingers.
The breading doesn’t have any sort of spices on it, or different flavor to it, they aren’t super crunchy, they’re just kind of … plain. I would definitely take Popeyes, Chick Fil A or even Culvers chicken fingers over Raising Cane’s based on my first impressions the other night. And I don’t know if it’s because we ordered it to go and brought it home… like, I’m not sure if eating it at the restaurant would have made it taste a bit better. But I live 2 minutes from this new location so it’s not like it had to travel far. I don’t know… it just really did not impress me very much.
I’m sure some people will come out and say that it’s the Cane Sauce that makes it that much better, and I even tried that, but it didn’t really do anything for me.
Like I said, the chicken fingers are not bad by any means, but there’s just nothing special about them. I really wanted to like them since it’s another option that’s so close to home, but it just fell a little flat to me.
Has anyone else had Raising Cane’s chicken fingers? What did you think? Am I being too critical or are they just kind of boring compared to the other chicken options available these days?
Morton Grove Raising Cane’s
This review is more so about the Raising Cane’s food than this particular location, but I wanted to say that the staff was extremely helpful and friendly even though the place was an absolute madhouse this week for its grand opening. There was a little miscommunication when I was trying to sub out texas toast for extra fries, but they were super nice and we got it corrected. I was super impressed with the way the staff was handling everything in the drive-thru.
So I have zero complaints about the restaurant itself, the staff, or the way they were handling an extremely busy opening week crowd. They were doing an amazing job.
I have never been impressed by the flavor of: 1. Their chicken “fingers”. It’s only salt and pepper and 2. Their ketchup/mayo/pickle juice dipping sauce. Why not at least try a little harder? 1. SEASON the chicken, much like KFC, Popeye’s, (insert ANY other chicken restaurant here), with more that 2 seasonings??? 2. Add some FLAVORED dipping sauces, and stop treating ketchup/mayo/ and pickle juice sauce as if it is the end all/ be all sauce? I give it a 1 out of 5 rating for flavor.