Washington - KFC's latest salvo in the chicken sandwich arms race (wings race?) in the fast-food industry immediately prompted outrage.
Some, understandably, saw the over-the-top offering - a fried hunk of bird between two glazed doughnuts in place of a bun - as a nutritional abomination: the fat! the sugar! the calorieeeeees! Others had more existential takes. "Fried industrial chicken smashed between two stale doughnuts is maybe the best metaphor yet for Trump's America," was Grub Street's summation.
But what if - and stick with me here - it were actually... delicious?
Reader, I think it might be.
I tried the sandwich at a KFC in Hopewell, Virginia, outside Richmond, one of three markets where the chain is testing the limited-time menu addition. For $5.99 (about R90), I got the sandwich (does anyone really need a side of potato wedges with this?) and a gratis case of early-onset regret for the gastronomic sin I was about to commit.
It arrived in a cardboard shell bearing a clue as to what I'd find inside: Running down the side was a large drip of sugary glaze, like a warning sign on a highway to Candyland. But I had braved the traffic on Interstate 95, and now I was seated under a large poster of Colonel Sanders and there was no turning back. Once in hand, it was clear the doughnuts were fresh from the fryer, evidenced by the way the topping melted off the pastry, pooling on the paper bed beneath it and sticking to my fingers as I attempted to wrestle it into my maw.
But when I did? A sweet-meets-salty, crispy-meets-pillowy mash-up that my lizard brain immediately loved despite that snooty voice in my head mocking it. The chicken filet was well-seasoned and juicy, encased in a peppery, craggy coating. The soft doughnuts deflated a bit as I ate, pressing the glaze into the chicken and making the concoction easier to handle, though I still went through seven napkins eating only half of it.
There are no toppings on the sandwich and no sauce, all of which would have interfered with its straightforward appeal. It's just fried chicken. On doughnuts. What did Aristotle write about the sum being greater than its parts? Well, he might have dug this sandwich, too.
Not that KFC has created something new. Novelty buns are been-there-done-that. After all, it was the chicken chain that also gave the world the "Double Down," the bacon-and-cheese sandwich that no one needed, which swapped out buns in favour of chicken patties.