This fast-food chain serves one specialty

Larry Olmsted | Special to USA TODAY

The scene: Raising Cane’s is doing for chicken tenders what another Southern-born chain, Chick-fil-A, did for chicken sandwiches — making tastier fast-food versions to popularize all over the country.

The concept was born in Louisiana when Todd Graves had the idea to open a chicken finger-focused restaurant and recruited his friend and business partner, Craig Silvey, to help. They submitted a business plan as part of a course at LSU, and according to the company’s online history, the plan got the worst grade in the class and “the professor said a chicken finger restaurant would never work. The banks said the same.” Nonetheless Graves believed in his concept, followed his convictions, and saved enough money after stints working as a boilermaker in a Louisiana refinery and then as a salmon fisherman in Alaska to open his first restaurant in a former bakery in Baton Rouge, La.

When tearing out walls, he found an old mural of the bakery logo concealed behind brick and decided to adopt the style and lettering. Every location now boasts a signature wall mural of the Raising Cane’s logo emerging from behind the middle of a broken brick wall. Each also has one or more pictures of Graves’ dog, Raising Cane, who hung around the construction site with Graves when he was working on the first eatery. After this, a friend convinced him to name the place after the friendly Labrador Retriever. (His original idea was “Sockeye’s Chicken Fingers” because he had fished for the Sockeye salmon to raise start-up capital.) Raising Cane has since passed away, but Graves and his wife got a puppy, Cane II, who is now grown and certified as a therapy dog visiting children hospitals weekly. The presence of the founder and his dogs are very much felt throughout the operation with personal stories and photos on the company website, photos in the restaurants, and a letter to customers printed on the soft drink cups explaining the chain’s fresh, never frozen mantra.

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Otherwise the Raising Cane décor is best described as eclectic, with lots of pop culture pictures and movie posters, everything from Wonder Woman to Elvis. It is order at the counter and grab a seat fast food with a drive thru, though the quality of the sleek furniture, brick and wood finishes of the floors and walls, and omnipresent hospitality of the staff evoke a slightly more upscale take on the genre. The formula certainly works — in the two decades since the first spot opened in 1996, Raising Cane’s has expanded to nearly 400 locations in 24 states as well as serval other countries, mostly in the Middle East. Business Insider named it the "top restaurant chain of 2017," and for the 20th anniversary Graves unveiled a five-year plan to reach 600 stores and $1.5 billion in revenue by 2020.

While the brand is most densely represented across Louisiana, Texas and the Southeast, there are locations in Chicago, Las Vegas, up and down California, across the Midwest with many in Ohio, in the Colorado Rockies and Arizona desert, as far north as Minnesota, and there's even one in Boston, the sole Northeastern outpost (for now).

Reason to visit: chicken tenders.

The food: Menus don’t get much simpler than the one at Raising Cane’s — the sole protein is chicken tenders/fingers, which only come breaded and fried. Then there are just four options to choose from, plus a kid’s meal and catering-style tailgate platters. The signature entrée is the Box Combo: four tenders with Cane’s Sauce for dipping, cole slaw, crinkle cut fries, griddled Texas toast and a drink. The other options are all pretty much the same except for the number of fingers — there’s a slightly smaller three-finger combo, and the Caniac, with six tenders and two servings of the dipping sauce. The most “radical” departure on the menu is the sandwich combo, which is simply three tenders on a roll with lettuce and Cane’s Sauce, served with fries and a drink but no slaw. You come to Cane’s for the chicken tenders and there is nothing else you can have — even the tailgate platters are simply trays of 25, 50, 75 or 100 fingers and appropriate amounts of Cane’s Sauce. This is a secret recipe that fans have reverse engineered and shared online, basically a mix of ketchup and mayo with Worcestershire sauce and spices added.

So how has Raising Cane’s become so successful selling essentially one item? The chicken fingers taste great, and for the big chain fast-food world, the quality is high. The restaurant uses only chicken breast tenderloins, the strip of meat on the underside of a chicken breast that is considered a premium cut in the poultry business, and these are never frozen. Each restaurant receives a continuous supply of fresh tenderloins, and then the meat is only cooked to order, never in advance (no heat lamps here). The chicken is marinated for extra flavor and juiciness, and when you order, staffers hand dip and bread the chicken, then fry it in canola oil, calling out diners' order numbers when it’s ready. The process moves quickly even with the cooked to order strategy and it’s worth the very short wait. The chicken tenders are juicy, meaty, generously sized and taste real, like chicken, not the chopped and reformed breaded patties many places use. The pink-hued Cane's Sauce is a good complement, tangy and slightly spicy with the consistency of a creamy dressing like ranch, but the menu could benefit from other options like barbecue or honey mustard, thought the model seems to be very much about keeping it simple and focused, and if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.

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I’m not generally a fan of crinkle-cut fries, and there’s a good reason why these are one of the least popular restaurant styles in the country, but like the chicken, at Raising Cane’s the fries are better than the norm, thinner and crispier than most. Because the fries are also fried freshly and quickly salted so the salt sort of melts into the exterior, the crinkles help by expanding surface area. The cole slaw also tastes fresher than you might expect in this setting and at this price point, and it is made in fresh batches in each location every day so it stays crisp. The crispness and creaminess make a good contrasting partner to the chicken.

The least interesting thing on the menu is the Texas toast, more like a New England-style hot dog roll (those with the non-crusted, white bread-exposed vertical sides) that hasn’t been split, a blandish strip of bread that's griddled. On the other hand, the roll for the chicken sandwich is very good, much better than other fast-food places, sweet and eggy with a bit of yellow color, but there is so much Cane’s Sauce (on top and bottom) and a lot of chicken jammed in, that it is very sloppy to eat, and not recommended for in-car consumption.

The equation is simple — if you like chicken tenders or chicken tender sandwiches you will probably like Raising Cane’s a lot, and if you don’t, there is absolutely no reason to visit (though the sweet tea is good). The final piece of the well-oiled machine here is the staff — I find them consistently very friendly at every location, and not just at the counter, as there are smiling employees roaming the restaurants making eye contact and constantly cleaning up, something I don’t normally see at fast-food chains.

Pilgrimage-worthy?: No, but it’s definitely one of the better roadside fast food options on America’s highways — if you like chicken tenders.

Rating: Yum! (Scale: Blah, OK, Mmmm, Yum!, OMG!)

Price: $ ($ cheap, $$ moderate, $$$ expensive)

Details: Locations in 24 states, especially across the Southeast, Texas, Midwest, Southwest and California; raisingcanes.com

Larry Olmsted has been writing about food and travel for more than 15 years. An avid eater and cook, he has attended cooking classes in Italy, judged a barbecue contest and once dined with Julia Child. Follow him on Twitter, @TravelFoodGuy, and if there's a unique American eatery you think he should visit, send him an e-mail at travel@usatoday.com. Some of the venues reviewed by this column provided complimentary services.