Popeyes Vs Raising Cane's: Which Chain Has The Best Chicken Tenders Meal?

Chicken tenders may be a staple of kids' menus everywhere, but they are hardly child's play. Raising Cane's and Popeyes are two fast food chains that stake their business on taking chicken tenders seriously. Both chains began in Louisiana and claim a Southern heritage to their food. Both offer a 3-piece chicken tender meal. And both have locations on the same block near me. The stage was set for a chicken tenders showdown.

Both come with three tenders and a side of fries. Both offer a bready side: Raising Cane's has Texas toast, and Popeyes has a biscuit. So, how would these two purported fried chicken experts do in a head-to-head competition? I sat down with both chicken tender meals and compared them. I considered the golden crunchiness on the outside and the juiciness on the inside of each restaurant's tenders. I thought about how each meal's sides contributed to the overall meal. And of course, I wanted to know which chicken tender meal tasted better. Here's how it all played out.

I judged and compared these chicken tender meals on both their individual components and the overall combo. The largest factors were their taste, texture, size, and freshness. I tried both tender meals within 5 minutes of receiving them, as I ordered them in person at neighboring locations. This initial, immediate tasting allowed me to get an accurate sense of the textures and flavors of each combo meal component before transport. Both meals were then tried again about 30 minutes later, after having sat in a bag. Due to the strong effect travel had on the texture of several items, the second taste test did not consider aspects like crunchiness.

While a fountain drink is part of both chicken tender meals, the drinks I ordered were not factors in my evaluation, as they were both of a standard size and would differ depending on the individual patron's order. I did order a lemonade as my drink for both meals to remove any additional variables that could affect the taste test.

The Raising Cane's chicken tenders — technically, the company calls them chicken fingers — were a light, golden color with lovely, craggy bits of fried coating. They were also nice and big, probably due to the cut of chicken; the company uses tenderloin pieces for its tenders. But while the chicken pieces looked nice, as soon as I picked one up, I noticed the coating was soggy in spots, and it even started to fall off. Soon, I had half-bald chicken tenders.

When I tasted the tenders, I found them to be exceptionally moist. But they were also exceptionally bland. Of course, it's an unwritten rule at Raising Cane's that you are meant to eat the tenders with the famous Cane's sauce. Some have argued that the chicken is bland because all the seasoning one needs is in the sauce. But I don't buy it. It doesn't follow logically that food needs to be bland if it's paired with a flavorful sauce.

The french fries, while bountiful, had their own strikingly similar problems. Admittedly, I'm already not a huge fan of crinkle-cut fries, which these fries are. But these french fries could have been any shape, and they still would have been disappointing, because they were lacking in salt (or any seasoning whatsoever) and were soggy to the point of being a mono-textured pile of potato. The chain's Texas toast, a buttered and toasted thick slice of bread, was tasty enough. But the last thing this meal needed was another relatively dry, mild-tasting starch.

A quick visual comparison showed me that, for better or worse, Popeyes' combo items would be very different from their Raising Cane's counterparts. The Popeyes meal looked smaller overall, but not due to a lack of food; the fries were thinner cut, the tenders differently shaped, and the biscuit smaller than the Texas toast slice.

The tenders were also a deeper, more even golden color, with more nooks and crannies from the coating. I bit into one and was met with a powerful, satisfying crunch. The coating was steadfast, not separating from the meat at any point. Plus, it was absolutely delicious. The meat was also well seasoned, and while some bites were a bit dry, it was overall relatively juicy. These were definitely not as thick as the Raising Cane's tenders, and the coating overwhelmed the meat in some of the smaller sections — but with a coating so tasty, I didn't mind.

The fries were a classic cut and as golden brown as the chicken. They had a perfectly crispy exterior and a fluffy, tender interior. Popeyes serves Cajun-style fries, which nabbed the top spot in our ranking of the chain's sides, and these were deftly seasoned. The Popeyes biscuit can be polarizing. Many think Popeyes has the best biscuits in the business. But the fact that they can lean on the dry side is a frequent customer complaint about this fried chicken chain. As I chewed this biscuit, I had to admit that the exterior was a little dry. But the inside was tender, buttery, salty, and undeniably a treat.

Like in the Tasting Table Chick-fil-A vs. Raising Cane's chicken tender meal showdown, the winner here was clear, and it definitely wasn't Raising Cane's. While both meals were a comparable price and size, Popeyes performed much better across the board. The Raising Cane's tenders are plumper and juicier. But the Popeyes tender's steadfast coating, irresistible crunch, and deft seasoning made them overall far superior, even if some bites had more coating than meat. And while the Cane's sauce is undeniably delicious, a chicken tender needs to stand on its own, not just as a vehicle for the chain's well-loved chicken sauce.

The portion of fries from Popeyes was slightly less than that from Raising Cane's, but I actually wanted to eat the Popeyes fries and was sad when they were gone, whereas the Cane's fries were depressing, and I ultimately only had a few. And sure, the Popeyes biscuit is a little dry. But it brings a buttery tenderness that Rasing Cane's Texas toast doesn't, and critically, the biscuit can afford to be more subtle in flavor because the rest of the meal is so flavorful. It provides contrast instead of just more of the same. 

When it comes down to what makes a fried chicken meal delicious, Popeyes has it down to a science. Raising Cane's just doesn't measure up.