Walking. Gossip. Travel.

Tag: Raising Cane’s Chicken

  • 2022 US Trip – Raising Cane’s Chicken in Las Vegas

    2022 US Trip – Raising Cane’s Chicken in Las Vegas

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    KFC in the United States are mounting the best fight that they can against the growing number of rivals that they’re facing, not least Popeye’s, Jollibee, Chick-fil-A and also Raising Cane’s Chicken. In the UK, I rather suspect the KFC chain is doomed to a slow death, that’s perhaps evident from looking at the Google Review scores from their new restaurant in Beccles where they’ve plummeted to a rating of 2.1. It’s nearly impossible to get a score that low, I assume there’s some factor where they’re deliberately running down the venue. Others in Norfolk aren’t rated much higher, it’s all apparent that the public have lost respect for the chain and I can’t recall the last time I went to a KFC in the UK as their standards are so consistently low. It’s fair to say that I don’t set the bar that high with fast food either. Anyway, I mention this as these growing chains are so much better that they’ll likely be able to take a big chunk out of the KFC market in the UK if they arrive over here. Well, Chick-fil-A won’t be back due to other ethical reasons, but I hope to see Raising Cane’s Chicken making the jump at some stage. As for Raising Cane’s, they’ve gone from 360 restaurants to 2018 to over 650 today and their expansion seems fast.

    I fear that I’m going too far down the food debate argument, so here’s a video for anyone interested in this theory that KFC is on a decline in the US that it won’t be able to turn around.

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    Modern and on-trend, the staff members were friendly, personable and merrily explaining the menu to every customer. Although this isn’t their first venue in Las Vegas (indeed I’ve visited one before), it’s I think their first flagship location here and it only opened a few weeks before I visited.

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    There was plenty of space upstairs and it was spotlessly clean and all looked smart and organised. There’s a sense of class to this operation and the dining area has more of a restaurant feel than a fast food ambience.

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    With the view of New York New York casino out of the window, it was possible to people watch those walking down the Strip. As for the food, well, it was suitably decadent. Tender and moist chicken with a crunchy but not hard coating, Texas toast (effectively just double sized toast which is grilled with a garlic top) that was enjoyable to eat, coleslaw and their house dip, alongside some crinkle cut chips. As for ratings since I started off on that road, it’s sitting currently on 4.7 on Google, as high as a venue is likely to get.

  • Las Vegas – Raising Cane’s Chicken

    And with my last post being about fine dining in a French restaurant (or if not fine dining then close enough) it meant that the next meal needed to be one which I could tick off my fast food chain list. And this was Cane’s, a Louisiana based chicken restaurant where they claim that their chicken fingers are always fresh and never frozen. They have, according to Wikipedia, 432 locations across the United States which have mostly opened over the last few years. They’re started an international expansion, although there aren’t yet any in the UK.

    The four piece combo meal, although the lovely staff gave me five pieces of chicken for reasons unknown. I like to think it was because they thought I deserved it, but they probably just miscounted. The chicken did seem freshly cooked and was moist and tender, with the coating being crispy and flavoursome. The crinkle cut chips were sufficiently salty and the American style coleslaw added texture, taste and some colour to the proceedings. The Texas Toast, which seemed to be some form of soft garlic bread, I wasn’t so excited by though, although I later realised I could have swapped it for more chips. Anyway, always worth trying…

    Service was friendly, although it’s one of those places where you give your name and they call it out. I prefer numbers, avoids any issues with spelling names, although it all worked out on this one. The restaurant was surprisingly cold in terms of the temperature with a gale running through it from the back door to the front, but I like cold, so this suited me. The drinks were self-pour and unlimited refills, as with most of the US, which again suited me as I like binge drinking sugary soda drinks.

    Anyway, as fast food chains go, this gets my seal of approval. I don’t actually have a seal to make an impression to give to the restaurant, but I liked it and it all seemed well managed and clean. The quality of the chicken was excellent and this is another restaurant that is much better than KFC, perhaps one of the most inconsistent chains that there is (especially in the UK). I hope that they open in the UK in due course…..