Popeyes Honey Chicken Biscuit Sandwich

As soon as I finished reading Tim Carman's rave Washington Post review of Popeyes' newest offering (above), I got my car keys and headed straight to the location 3 miles from my house.

Short review shorter: He's right!

Below, his paean to the king.

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Popeyes Has Another Hit With Its Honey Chicken Biscuit Sandwich

The Louisiana kitchen owes its customers a huge thanks for pointing the chain in the direction of this winning combo.

One of my favorite things about fast-food restaurants is their willingness to let customers innovate for them, a reminder that some of the best ideas don't come from tests kitchens or corporate boardrooms but rather from people who know how to hack an existing menu.

The latest example arrived last Monday at Popeyes, the Louisiana kitchen that made us lose our collective minds seven years ago over a chicken sandwich. The Miami-based chain just introduced the honey chicken biscuit, a sandwich that customers have been apparently engineering tableside for years. I stand in awe of the moxie of the American diner who reviews a fast-food menu and says, "I can do better."

For better or worse, I think most Popeye fans will want to compare the latest offering to the chicken sandwich that launched a thousand imitators. I think that's a mistake. The two sandwiches feel like two sides of the same bun — connected but distinct.

The original sandwich is the pinnacle of corporate-kitchen craft, a succulent chicken breast fried and entombed in a sweet brioche bun, offset with briny pickles to provide just enough pucker. While it has Southern touches, the sandwich still feels very much like a fast food creation, its bun a dead giveaway that it doesn't wander too far from the competition.

The honey chicken biscuit, by contrast, feels Southern Southern. Like sweet tea on a South Carolina veranda in mid-July. Popeyes designed a slighter larger version of its beloved biscuit to accomodate the thick, crackly breast meat, a protein so tender you'd swear it was 50 percent buttermilk. The biscuit and chicken come unadorned, the former doing its best to contain the gnarly length of fried bird. The combo includes two packets of "honey sauce," whose corn-syrup sweetness completes the picture.

I pounded this sandwich like I had not eaten in a week. Its components just locked into place: chicken, salt, butter, honey, crunch, flakiness, simplicity, elegance. This is a dish that somehow takes you outside the sterile walls of a chain and provides the kind of comfort we long for in our food.