Welcome to Bon Appétit's first-ever Culture Issue! All month long we'll be bringing you stories from the intersection of food and music and entertainment and politics and more. (Psst, subscribe here!)
When I was in high school, the going rate at lunch for a fried chicken sandwich from Chick-fil-A was three bags of Doritos. Highly prized eating in my native South—and for good reason: Chick-fil-A was the only name in the chicken-sandwich kingdom. Fast-forward 25 years, and suddenly I’m reveling in the crunchy, juicy, golden age of the fried chicken sandwich. I mean, did you see the lines when Chick-fil-A opened its first store in Manhattan? So now my childhood friend has become a national star, everywhere from Bakesale Betty in Oakland, CA, to David Chang’s Fuku (a mini-chain that he all but admits was inspired by Chick-fil-A) in NYC to Danny Meyer’s many Shake Shacks, where the debut of the Chick’n Shack caused the social-media version of a riot. My only question is: What took y’all so long?—Andrew Knowlton
Atlanta restaurateur S. Truett Cathy puts breaded chicken breasts on hamburger buns and—at least according to Chick-fil-A legend—invents the modern FCS.
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McDonald’s introduces the McChicken sandwich and…it fails miserably. Eight years later, it will be resurrected.
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Inspired by the buttermilk fried chicken at Chez Panisse, blue-wigged Aussie Alison Barakat creates an FCS topped with vinegary coleslaw for Bakesale Betty in Oakland, CA. The cheffy-fried-chicken-sandwich craze (arguably) begins.
KFC announces the Double Down Sandwich (two fried chicken fillets sandwiching bacon) in what many take as an April Fool’s Day joke. It isn’t. Meanwhile, The Commodore introduces Brooklyn to the Hot Breast, its addictively spicy sandwich take on Nashville’s venerable hot chicken.
Jon Shook and Vinny Dotolo’s L.A. seafood spot Son of a Gun garners a cult following for its FCS, which lands on the cover of BA two years later.
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Leghorn—an aspiring FCS chain—opens its first location in Chicago, promising to donate 2% of its revenue to gay rights organizations.
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David Chang opens Fuku in his original Momofuku Noodle Bar location as the first in a planned FCS empire.
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Pandemonium breaks out over Shake Shack’s limited-edition FCS. Six months later, it debuts on menus nationwide.
Photo: Alex Lau
Determined to engineer the ultimate fried chicken sandwich, senior associate food editor Claire Saffitz tests a whole lot of versions (in the name of research, naturally) while developing her recipe. Finally, Saffitz decides she can settle for nothing less than the crispy-juicy-salty stack known around here as the best fried chicken sandwich we've ever made. Go make it, already!