For five years now, we’ve been living through the Chicken Sandwich Wars.
It all began in August of 2019, when Popeyes added a fried chicken sandwich to its menu. The sandwich's popularity inspired lethal violence. Shortly thereafter, Chick-fil-A fired back with a not-so-subtle tweet claiming that their chicken sandwich was the original. Popeyes saw this as an act of aggression and mobilized their Twitter in response with a simple yet incendiary “…y’all good?” The war was on.
Within weeks, it felt like every restaurant, from the fast-food to the fast-casual, had joined the fray. New or re-released fried chicken sandwiches popped up at pretty much every burger and chicken chain you could think of and some you never knew existed. Social media went crazy, lines formed around blocks, and supply chains were tested.
Five years in, the initial tension may have calmed down, but we’re no closer to peace. Skirmishes still break out as brands add new sauces, breading, and buns to their arsenals. “The fried chicken sandwich wars are more cutthroat than ever before,” Bloomberg’s Deena Shanker reported last month, and that’s very true here in the Twin Cities—especially on the vegan front.
Now, the vegan front may not have the tide-changing battles that will one day show up in history textbooks, but the confrontations show that the impacts of the food fight have been lasting, whether the meat is real or not.
In this engagement, the artillery is a standard vegan fried chicken sandwich, consisting of a fried and breaded fake-chicken breast (typically made from soy and/or wheat gluten), pickles, lettuce (in most cases), and some sort of mayo. While the sandwiches are similar, each restaurant deploys them differently.
The Established Empire
As is often the case in war, we have our established power. In this instance, that’s The Herbivorous Butcher, the nationally recognized vegan meat maker that opened in northeast Minneapolis in 2016. In 2021, they opened Herbie Butcher’s Fried Chicken in the Nokomis neighborhood—and, unsurprisingly, their sandwich is good.
Nestled inside a sesame seed bun, this chicken’s breading-to-meat ratio may skew slightly to the bready side, but that’s not a bad thing. It’s flavorful, a touch more savory than the rest of the entrants, and the right level of crispiness, so very few will wish they had less of it. The fake-meat is real-meaty enough in both texture and taste, and it doesn’t get concealed by the breading. The Butcher sauce, generously drizzled across the sandwich, has some of the tanginess of mayo and some of the smokiness of BBQ sauce, and partners well with the fried chicken. And just as the larger, non-PETA-friendly Chicken Sandwich Wars have led to advancements like Fuku’s habanero brined chicken, the vegan theater has seen Herbie Butcher’s develop multiple options in their armories—branching into different levels of spice, and offering options like the Buffalo Chicken Sandwich. They’ve even got a breakfast sandwich with fake egg and bacon sitting atop their fake chicken.
And The Herbivorous Butcher’s reign extends beyond their own chicken shop. At the beginning of 2023, the vegan meat makers bought St. Paul vegan powerhouse J. Selby’s. For half a decade, the two occupied the lone two seats on the local Vegan Security Council; now they’re one united force.
J. Selby’s offered a vegan chicken sandwich made from a different fake meat prior to being subsumed, but now they use the Herbivorous Butcher’s chicken. Like Herbie Butcher’s, the J. Selby’s sandwich has a good breading-to-meat ratio, but this version isn’t quite as crispy as the one at Herbie’s. There also seemed to be a little less meat on the sandwich.
Of all the sandwiches in the trenches, this was simplest. In many of the bites, the pickles and mayo outweighed the flavor of the chicken. The chicken and its breading didn’t attempt to do anything fancy but still had a good, standard chicken taste that stood by itself.
The Herbivorous Butcher doesn’t stop there, either. Stray Dog, just blocks away from the Herbivorous Butcher’s flagship location in northeast Minneapolis, has a large (and under-discussed!) vegetarian and vegan menu that includes yet another fried chicken sandwich made with Herbivorous Butcher meat.
Stray Dog’s towering sandwich isn’t as spicy as its toppings of sweet and spicy pickles and rooster mayo might suggest. It has a more peppery flavor, likely due to the pickles, and maybe something in its batter. This sandwich goes the opposite direction of J. Selby’s when it comes to the breading, making a crispier sandwich. That crispiness is good, and more noticeable, because Stray Dog skews furthest to the breading side on the breading-to-protein ratio of any other restaurant on this list.
The Rising Powers
There’s more than one cock in this fight. Elsewhere in Northeast is Francis Burger Joint, the Sociable Cider Werks food truck turned Central Avenue brick-and-mortar that began offering its chicken sandwich a few months after Herbie Butcher’s (a second location is coming to Longfellow soon). Francis, which gets its “meat” from a national brand but makes the breading in-house, rivals Herbie’s when it comes to the meatiness. That in-house breading, which is probably the closest—in texture and taste—to traditional fried chicken breading of all the sandwiches in the Twin Cities, holds its own with the flavor and texture of the meat. The meat at Francis is thicker than Herbie Butcher’s, so it’s a little denser, but it’s tender enough to convince a vegan they’re eating something that resembles real chicken.
Not satisfied with the standard chicken? Francis has two flavor-packed alternatives in the Hunny Dijon and MN Spicy choices, and, occasionally, the Rodeo Chicken Sandwich, with vegan bacon, pickled jalapeños, BBQ aioli, and fried onions, makes a brief appearance on the specials list.
And Francis isn’t the only resistance in this conflict. There’s also French Meadow, the Uptown restaurant that was serving quality fresh food long before any of the other restaurants were even dreamed up. French Meadow may not have the buzzy newness that the younger opposition has, but this farm-to-table innovator rivals all of them in terms of quality and variety.
And their vegan fried chicken sandwich, with secret sauce and housemade pickles, tastes pretty damn good… even if it’s not my favorite of the five. It also provides a greater deviation from the norm than any other hostile force. Compared to the other offerings, it actually doesn’t taste as much like chicken; the texture of the meat is flakier, and the breading is thinner and less crispy. In fact, that texture makes it more like a fake-fish sandwich than a fake-chicken sandwich. And hey, there’s a lack of vegan fish offerings in the world—it just isn’t always wise to bring a fish to a bird fight.
Then again, French Meadow’s offering has lasted when other sandwiches haven’t. Recent years have seen other restaurants put down their weapons. The Kitchen, located in Midtown Global Market, took their vegan chicken sandwich off the menu following low sales but continues to operate as normal, and Stalk & Spade, the great local vegan chain, closed all of its doors last November, taking its fried chicken sandwiches with it. Recently shuttered chain Stalk & Spade, especially, is a cruel reminder that even with high-quality food, it can be hard to survive on the vegan front, especially when the general public is more concerned with the real-meat Chicken Sandwich Wars.
With those losses, though, it should be noted that consumers have benefited. Thanks to the arms race, vegan eaters in the Twin Cities now have five places they can go to eat chicken sandwiches. And all five of the chicken sandwiches at these restaurants offer something different. Some eaters prefer fried chicken so crispy they’ll chip a tooth (which they can get at Stray Dog), while others want a hunk of meat with a light coating (which can be had at French Meadow), and you can get anything along that spectrum at the other venues.
So, don’t pray for peace. Instead, praise the lord, and pass the chicken ammunition.
