The last Chick-Fil-A sandwich I will ever eat.

I grew up eating Chick-Fil-A, and always loved it. The fact that they were religious enough to refuse to open on Sunday didn’t ever bother me, even though I knew it probably went along with some really conservative religious beliefs. For a long time I just didn’t really think about it. But after that whole same-sex marriage controversy in 2012, especially when it culminated with the Mike Huckabee-spearheaded “Chick-Fil-A Appreciation Day” event in August of that year, I just couldn’t eat there anymore. It sucks to have to bring politics into a discussion of sandwiches, but as a queer non-binary-identified human, I can’t stand to support a business whose owners are open about regarding me as a second-class citizen undeserving of equal rights.

It especially sucks because I really did miss Chick-Fil-A sandwiches once I stopped eating them. I know Jim didn’t think they were any great shakes, and he’s entitled to his opinion, but I can’t help but wonder if said opinion isn’t colored by the fact that he was raised outside the South. We like different things down here–we even get rid of headaches in a different way–and sometimes I am totally puzzled by the way the rest of the country doesn’t seem to think our ways are superior. OK, that’s probably because the South has a reputation as a cultural backwater, due to our region’s centuries-long association with racial oppression. But you don’t have to look much farther than the music of the Mississippi Delta, or Stax Records, to know that we’ve got a lot of awesome culture down here that was created in defiance of racist white people. And the rest of us aren’t afraid to co-opt traditions created by stupid old crackers when it benefits us.

You’ve got to be able to draw a line in the sand sometimes, though. While I’ve missed Chick-Fil-A sandwiches quite a few times in the three years since I swore them off, I’d never been able to bring myself to go back there. However, once we arrived at April’s list of sandwiches, I found myself presented with a dilemma. How to write about the classic Southern chicken sandwich without talking about Chick-Fil-A? Their advertised claim to have “invented the chicken sandwich” can’t possibly be legitimate, but it does have enough traction to have made it into the chicken sandwich wikipedia entry, which at least gives the chain near-certain credit for being the first fast-food place to serve a chicken sandwich. I thought about trying to find another place that makes chicken sandwiches to hit up instead. After all, there were bound to be places that did a knockoff of the classic Chick-Fil-A sandwich, right?

I couldn’t really think of any, though. You can get chicken sandwiches at plenty of fast food places these days, but none of them really have that Chick-Fil-A “lightly breaded chicken cutlet on a bun” feel. They’re either basically a deboned fried chicken sandwich, or they’re a super-healthy grilled chicken breast. The latter is an option I generally approve of, but still, the problem persisted–where could I get a Chick-Fil-A equivalent?

Ultimately, I decided to do the unthinkable. I’d buy a Chick-Fil-A sandwich one last time. It was for research, for SCIENCE–but it still made me feel bad. I hate to give even as paltry a sum as $7 to a company that actively works towards keeping me disenfranchised. Nonetheless, it was one last opportunity to evaluate exactly why I love these things so much, despite the fact that Jim found them–somewhat legitimately–to be a pretty boring sandwich on paper.

Look, I don’t know what the breading on the Chick-Fil-A sandwich really consists of. I don’t know why it’s so good. I do know that it can store random pockets of grease within its folds–I once had a Chick-Fil-A sandwich squirt a large amount of liquid all over my shirt as I bit into it. Which was terrible and humiliating, and I’m glad the experience has never been repeated. But even on that day, I wasn’t that bummed out, because seriously, that sandwich was so good.

The breading, as I was about to say, is subtly flavorful. It doesn’t taste like skin, which is good in my opinion because I’ve never particularly held the popular mania for the flavor of fried chicken skin. It’s not particularly spicy either, and for all I know, it’s barely seasoned at all. But there’s a subtle flavor addition that separates this sandwich from what you’d get if you really did just slap a chicken cutlet on a bun, and it is very important to the overall experience.

Jim has mentioned how chintzy it seems that these sandwiches are so bare-bones in terms of condiments, only coming with a couple of pickle chips on them. In my adult life, I’ve come to enjoy the world of condiments, vegetable garnishes, and the like. However, as a kid, I was always a big proponent of minimally decorated sandwiches. Hamburgers should only have ketchup on them–maybe not even that. Chicken sandwiches might need some pepper, but certainly nothing more. Believe it or not, for 90% of the time in my life that I was a regular consumer of Chick-Fil-A sandwiches, I would open the thing up and discard the pickle chips before eating. And hell no I did not add any mayonnaise. Get the fuck out of here with that white devil condiment. No but seriously, mayo is disgusting.

I did finally learn to enjoy the pickles on the Chick-Fil-A sandwich about a year before I stopped eating the damn things. I don’t think I made a conscious effort to even try the sandwich with the pickles, either–I just forgot to take them off. Lo and behold, they were tasty as hell. They mingled with the flavor of the chicken so well that I found myself having to credit them for making the overall sandwich better. I was so pleasantly surprised, in fact, that I gave leaving pickles on a fast-food hamburger a shot a few weeks later. Suffice it to say that didn’t work out so well. Something about the combo of Chick-Fil-A chicken and pickles made the whole thing work for me. And when I ate my one last Chick-Fil-A sandwich the other day, I still really liked this taste profile.

There’s nothing that really stands out as giving the Chick-Fil-A sandwich a reason to be great. Even after all this time, returning to the fold once more for old time’s sake did not give me the crucial insight to make the whole thing make sense. I don’t know why I love those sandwiches so much, and while I’ll probably continue to sigh wistfully whenever I drive past a Chick-Fil-A location on my way to eat somewhere else. There’s just something subtle but perfect about the damn things.

One more thing I would like to mention before I end this–the waffle fries. These things don’t seem like they should be any cooler or more special than any other fast food french fry. I do like the stronger connection to their original potato form that Chick-Fil-A waffle fries have, but for all I know they’re reverse-engineering that whole thing out of frozen french fries that are glued together through the miracles of molecular gastronomy in a factory somewhere. But be that as it may, waffle fries are the bomb. I’d be willing to go so far as to say they provide a significant portion of the Chick-Fil-A experience. I’ll miss these damn things too.

Having said all of this–fuck Chick-Fil-A. Their sandwiches could taste like the kiss of god himself and it wouldn’t make it worth it to support their scummy political behaviors. I’ll definitely never go there again. I leave you with this tongue-in-cheek fake endorsement for Chick-Fil-A, created by a few drag queens pretending to be Wilson-Phillips.

Now, would somebody please tell me where else I can go to get a fast food chicken sandwich this good?