Best fast-food chicken sandwiches: Is Chick-fil-A or KFC #1?

I’ve been closely watching the fast-food fried chicken wars for a couple years now. When Popeyes introduced its chicken sandwich in 2019, it threatened to dethrone Chick-fil-A as the go-to place for fried chicken with pickle chips on a bun. Now, almost every major fast-food chain is pushing a fried chicken sandwich.

A report from the Edison Trends data company that tracked more than 100,000 food delivery app transactions over two years found that online chicken sandwich sales grew by 420% between January 2019 and December 2020.

Church’s Chicken launched its crispy chicken sandwich with honey butter in October 2020. Wendy’s debuted its classic chicken sandwich around the same time. In February, McDonald’s released its revamped crispy chicken sandwich on a potato roll. KFC followed shortly after with its chicken sandwich. Burger King started offering a hand-breaded crispy chicken sandwich in April. And just this week, Carl’s Jr. entered the arena with its hand-breaded chicken sandwich.

With so many options available, there was only one thing to do. I asked Times restaurant critic Bill Addison if he would help me decide who made the best fast-food fried chicken sandwich. After an afternoon full of serious deliberation and many dirty napkins, we chose a winner. Watch the video above to see who won.