I've had a long relationship with fast-food chicken sandwiches. There have been many winter nights when I’ve been covering a basketball game in some far-flung part of the state, and the only option for a quick dinner at 10 p.m. involves a drive-thru window or a highway rest area, and a chicken sandwich always seems like a better option than a burger.
It goes back farther than that, though. The spicy chicken sandwich was my go-to choice at the Wendy’s located halfway through the five hour drive home from my first apartment in Vermont and my parents’ house in Connecticut. And of course there was the weekend in Boston during college when my fiends and I dined exclusively on $1 chicken sandwiches during a promotion at Burger King.