McDonald’s Southern Style Crispy Chicken Sandwich

I’ve always felt like McDonald’s has done a good job of creating new and unique food items that you never knew you wanted. The McRib was a perfect example. I didn’t know that I needed a hunk of pork pressed to look like a short rack of ribs (edible bones included) and smothered in barbecue sauce, but once I had one I knew I needed another. The same thing can be said for the McGriddle. I don’t think I ever thought I needed a breakfast sandwich with meat and egg on syrup-infused bread, but damn that thing is good.

Though the ideas for these products may not have always come from Marketeers or Chef’s at McDonald’s, I always felt like McDonald’s didn’t steal these ideas from other national competitors. Until they announced the McDonald’s Southern Style Crispy Chicken Sandwich. Sure every fast food restaurant has a fried chicken breast sandwich, but this one is an exact rip-off of the Chick-Fil-A Chicken Sandwich. It even seems like they tried to make sure it was nutritionally equivalent as well:

	Calories	Fat	Saturated Fat	Carbs
Southern Style Crispy Chicken Sandwich	400	17g	3g	39g
Chick-Fil-A Chicken Sandwich	410	16g	3.5g	39g

On paper, these sandwiches seem identical, so I decided to make a trip to McDonald’s recently to determine if this sandwich was worth the hype. I was always a fan of the the other famous sandwich, the McChicken (the equivalent of a giant processed McNugget on a bun), but I’m a HUGE fan of the Chick-Fil-A sandwich and currently feel there is no better fast-food chicken sandwich in existence (sorry to all the Bojangle’s fans out there).

The verdict: No one anywhere in the Chick-Fil-A organization should lose sleep over the new sandwich from McDonald’s. The Southern Style Chicken sandwich was tasty (probably the best chicken sandwich I’ve ever had from McDonald’s), but anyone with a ounce of sense is not going to pick this turd over a Chick-Fil-A Chicken Sandwich — not even on Sundays.