Craving pickles? Popeyes is finally on the bandwagon, and it’s quite a ride
As the mountain of pickle-flavored snacks — or even funky-flavored pickles — piles up at our feet, I’m reminded by how neatly many of these products fall into two broad categories: those that are delicious and those that are not.
Most of Popeyes’ new pickle menu belongs to the former, though I feel like I need to affix an asterisk to this statement.
Introduced on April 1, the fast-food chain’s pickle menu was no joke. Its handful of pucker-inducing products — sandwich, lemonade, fried pickle chips, wings with sauce — goes where many others have gone before (pickle pizza, pickle cotton candy, dill pickle chips, pickle cupcakes, spicy pickle vodka, dill-pickle-flavored ice cream, and Dua Lipa’s pickle-and-jalapeño Diet Coke).
In the summer of 2019, Popeyes introduced a chicken sandwich that upended the fast-food industry, leading to shortages and hastily arranged copycats that couldn’t measure up. Then Popeyes released a variety of limited-time offerings — truffle chicken sandwich and fried flounder sandwich — that didn’t catch on.
The pickle menu at Popeyes, however, has pierced the noise of daily life, if only until May 5, when it is set to end. J. Kenji López-Alt, the cookbook author and self-proclaimed “pickle lover,” called the menu “shockingly good, like some of the best fast-food I’ve ever had.” Chefs have been praising it, and reviewers have mostly gushed over the briny offerings.
I’ve tried the menu multiple times now, and each time I’m struck by the pickle sauce. It’s spicy, sweet, dilly and acidic, a combination that strikes a neat balance between Popeyes tradition and Popeyes gimmickry. But the sauce is also gritty. When you swipe a finger through the mixture, its spices — garlic, onion, ancho chile peppers, according to a Popeyes flack — sit on the tongue like sand. Perhaps that’s not surprising. The sauce, I suspect, was not designed for straight consumption. Its meant to burrow itself to the crevices of Popeyes’ famous chicken coating.
The sauce really pops with the wings, whether bone-in or boneless. Sauce clings to the craggy surfaces, delivering alternating waves of heat and acid, the kind that tingles the lips and, on occasion, sends electrical currents down your jaw line. The dill flavor is pronounced, but the sweetness isn’t far behind. Many of these sensations can be lost, or muted, in the pickle-glazed sandwich, sometimes because the sauce (replacing the traditional slathering of mayo) has been applied sparingly or because the brioche bun runs too much interference. Ask the counter employee for a side of pickle sauce to add to your sandwich as needed.
The pickle chips are not sauced, but coated in a batter that has, on two occasions, arrived thick, pale and underfried, leaving a flour-y aftertaste. One Popeyes location, however, fried them to a golden crisp, which allowed the specimen buried within the shell to express its essential brininess. The chips come with a container of ranch dipping sauce, a condiment that may be superfluous. I prefer to slam them straight, at least when they’re done right.
To my surprise, the real showstopper here is the pickle lemonade, available frozen or simply chilled with ice. Go with the latter. The drink rides an invisible line, pulling together tart, sweet and briny flavors so seamlessly that you couldn’t remove one ingredient without the whole thing collapsing. If there is one item that I’d argue for permanent Popeyes menu inclusion, it’s this beauty, especially as the days grow longer and the temperatures hotter. It’s pure refreshment.