Food Review: Zaxby's Signature Chicken Sandwich

Could the sandwich meet the high expectations?

In September I wrote, for the first time, about a chicken sandwich in the Chicken Sandwich Wars. I’ve still tried few, if any, of the new chicken sandwiches floating around. I have long been a loyalist to the Original Chicken Sandwich at Chick-fil-A.

Today, since I am out of town, I added the Zaxby’s Signature Chicken Sandwich to the list of sandwiches I’ve tried.

If you aren’t familiar with Zaxby’s, you are missing out. They are a southern chain best known for their chicken strips, which are basically the best chicken strips on the planet. Zaxby’s far exceeds any other chain in the quality of their chicken strips. To boot, they also provide the world with Zax Sauce, which is an absolutely marvelous dipping sauce. You can put Zax Sauce on shoe letter and it would be edible.

Needless to say, I had high hopes for this sandwich. Zaxby’s describes it as “White breast meat fillet, Zax Sauce®, thick-cut pickle chips on a buttery, toasted, split-top potato bun”.

As you can tell, this is a BIG chicken sandwich. The piece of chicken is MASSIVE for a chicken sandwich. It is bigger than even a Chick-fil-A sandwich is, which is something else.

The Bread: The bread was a sandwich roll. It was no better or worse than any other sandwich roll, but it was plenty sturdy enough to hold up this massive piece of chicken.

The Sauce: You have two choices when ordering the sandwich: regular or spicy. Regular comes with Zax Sauce, the spicy comes with a spicy Zax Sauce. I got the regular. I’m not sure if the sandwich is suppose to be undersauced, but mine was definitely undersauced. One of the best things about Zaxby’s is the Zax Sauce. There wasn’t enough of it. What I really needed was an additional tub or two of Zax Sauce so I could either dip the sandwich or sauce it myself.

The Chicken: The sandwich was definitely fresh. The temperature of the chicken was practically the same as the surface of the Sun. Zaxby’s is seemingly always fresh, which is a great thing. But the chicken just wasn’t as good as their chicken tenders. I don’t know what it was. Maybe the size of the chicken meant that there was less crunchiness to the sandwich than one would normally get with their chicken tenders. Maybe it was partially because it needed more Zax Sauce to interact with. It was surprising how….normal the chicken was.

The Pickles: I have no idea what pickles they put on this sandwich, but they need to try something else. I love having pickles on my sandwich. I love them on the Chick-fil-A sandwich. I will eat pickles on practically any meat-based sandwich that I will eat. But the pickles on this sandwich are terrible. It would be addition by subtraction to just take these pickles off.

The Verdict: It’s ok for what it is. If you are at a Zaxby’s and desperately want a chicken sandwich, it’ll do. But on my next trip I would stick to the chicken tenders or, if you really have a jones for a sandwich, one of the several sandwich Zaxby’s offers that contains chicken tenders. There are better choices than this sandwich.