Big Mac Vs. Chick-fil-A Sandwich

I didn’t think any sandwich could rival the Chick-Fil-A crispy chicken sandwich, and I was right. I had always held that you could not beat Chick-Fil-A for a fast food joint, I don’t know, maybe that’s the southerner in me: I like my chicken fried and my lemonade tangy, but that’s me. But I was pressured by some unnamed foes to “try the Big Mac!” They spoke of the Big Mac like it was God’s gift to mankind, a sandwich worthy of turning your life around after. I didn’t want to like the Big Mac, but it was a Monday night, take-out food, I owed it to my rivals to give it a shot.

My meal sat in front of me, and I waited to be impressed. I’ve seen the commercials. Big Mac’s are enormous, piled high with delicious tangy orange sauce, pickles, onions, and thick, juicy, patties of meat. When I opened my box, I found THREE slices of mediocre bread. When I held it up to the light, I discovered that there were some brownish, pancake looking things, and possibly a dot of orange sauce somewhere. The ratio was mortifying! If you are going to put three slabs of carbs on one sandwich, at least add the protein to balance it out.

Still, I figured something had to keep Big-Mac fans coming back again and again so I took a big bite. I had two thoughts. My first thought was, wow, this is some nasty bread. Which it was. It was dry as all get out, and effectively stacked on top of each other. It was a toast sandwich with absolutely none of the flavor that a healthy glob of butter might have provided. On my second or third bite (the sandwich costs four bucks, you better believe I was going to finish it, lackluster or not) I found some of that orangy sauce and the finely chopped onions, that I assume are the reason Big Mac people stick with their sandwich.

Which brings me to my second thought. The four drops of sauce that were on my sandwich were pretty tasty. I mean, not anywhere near good enough to start a cult off of, but sweet and tangy, accentuated by the bitterness of the pickle and the sweetness of the onions. If you could find a bite with all of these components and went to the manual labor of sliding off all but maybe one of the buns, you might get a mediocre bite of food. But that’s a whole lot of work for mediocre. You shouldn’t need a miraculous sauce to save the day. A sauce should lift an already fantastic bite of food into something even more amazing than previously thought conceivable. You should be dreaming about it during math class. Instead, I’ll be having nightmares about the bread that stuck to my tongue, the limp patties of “meat” that I consumed, and the 563 guilt-trip I devoured.

Compare that to the Chick-Fil-A Sandwich. For thirty-four cents less, a bite of food that keeps me up at night with anticipation. But wait… there’s more. Before you even dive into the sandwich, which surpasses the Big Mac by about eight points on a scale of one to ten (I’ll leave the evaluating to you), there’s more to consider. Chick-Fil-A features friendly, Christian staff that make sure to say “My pleasure” after granting your every demand, with a smile on their face. Do you know how frustrating fast food jobs can be? And yet, every single time, a smile is the rule, rather than the exception. The service is phenomenal.

Chick-Fil-A is family friendly. True, McDonald’s offers a prison cell for children to play in, but it is notably vacant nine times out of ten because most parents cannot afford the hand sanitizer necessary to put their children in one of those rooms for ten minutes. Chick-fil-A’s playground is both fun and sanitary, which explains why it is consistently full of happy children. It also has fun promotions for schools, and dress like a cow for free food day, a tradition which my family has partaken in for years so that we actually have hand me down COW costumes. Turns out, Big Mac’s served with generally poor service, cost four bucks every day of the year (and six if you want some stale fries and a coke with your food).

But enough of a poorly written, fifth grade argument paper about Chick-Fil-A being the superior fast food restaurant. This is all about the sandwich.

The Chick-fil-A sandwich comes in many varieties. Some prefer the original sandwich, a crispy bite of fried chicken cut through with fresh American cheese and brightened with a tasty bite of juicy red tomato and lettuce. Others go for a spicy route: a sandwich bursting with flavor which pares excellently with Chick-fil-A sauce, which is so good, that they literally sell containers of it at the front of their store. Do they do that with Big Mac sauce? Remind me again. Like the Big-Mac sauce, it is tangy and sweet, but also silky smooth, and filled with a depth of flavor that far surpasses that of the Big-Mac sauce. Even their healthier grilled option, which comes in at just 310 calories, is juicy and flavorful. But no matter which way you go, the chicken sandwich is simply superior.

While the star of the Big Mac is three slices of bread, the star of the Chick-fil-A sandwich is the chicken itself. Take a bite and you can hear the crunch of the breading. The only crunch in a Big Mac comes from an occasional bit of onion. Next, the consumer is overwhelmed with the depth of flavor produced by all of the intentionally placed toppings swirling together in their mouth, along with a healthy dollop of Chick-fil-A sauce to COMPLETE the bite. At this point in a Big Mac, the consumer is scraping bread from the backs of their gums. Add to that sandwich a delicious cup of their legendary lemonade (if you prefer it less sour than they make it, the staff will water it down for you: it’s their pleasure!), waffle fries, and bowl of rich, creamy ice-cream (free with Kids meals), and the decision is obvious. If you’re hungry for food that’s fast: you’ve simply got to eat mor chickn.