Raising Cane's is my mom

i'm eating chicken fingers outside

One of the most embarrassing traits of my personality is that I unabashedly love Raising Cane’s. I’m a grown woman, someone who prides herself in her taste and who loves exploring food and one of my favorite meals is a box of chicken fingers and crinkle cut fries from a fast food chain. 

Every American has a favorite fast food joint. Usually, whichever one their parents fed them when it was cheaper or easier than making dinner. Or, in your adulthood it’s the one you pick because it’s the perfect distance from your apartment—far away enough to feel like you’re running from your problems and close enough to be convenient. Ideally, it has the best parking lot to quietly eat and cry in It’s the corporation that was there for you when you were down and out.  

It’s hard to find the thing that unites all Americans—what traits we all share through cultural osmosis and rearing. Sure, we’re loud or whatever. We like guns and driving fast. But I think what really unites us all here in the heart of the empire is that at some point or another everyone will become depressed or broke or emotionally wrung out from work or otherwise incapable of gathering groceries and cooking a meal. There will come a time when an American is hungry and heartbroken and there will be no one there to provide them with a hot meal. 

It’s here where McDonald’s and Taco Bell and Jack in the Box and Little Caesar’s and my ol’ reliable Raising Cane come in. A hot meal for cheap that will grab you by the haunches and shake you. Food from a drive-thru is the equivalent of being love bombed with MSG and sugar and pickles and carbs and it’s so overwhelmingly stimulating that it knocks you out of this reality for however long it takes you to eat three chicken fingers brined in pickle juice, a bunch of soggy fries, a piece of bread fried in butter, and 32 fluid ounces of lemonade. 

The thing about fast food is that it’s so much flavor and also not really flavorful at all. The flavor is salt and sugar. It’s always the same. But even now my mouth waters just thinking about Cane’s sauce (which is like, ranch and ketchup and maybe black pepper). It’s comforting. It’s my capitalist cyborg AI mother’s cooking. 

i made substack generate a photo of fries and a hand so that you would have a visual break between paragraphs. do you like this?

Cane’s has become something of an obsession in my biofamily. We didn’t really grow up eating it, it wasn’t the meal that we leaned on when my parents couldn’t cook. It was something we all found relatively recently—but the salty, crunchy, safety of a three finger combo welcome all of us with an embrace. My mom and stepdad regularly make pilgrimages from the Bay Area to Reno just for a good box of chicken fingers. When my sister and I lived together we would make regular pilgrimages to the Cane’s down the street when we wanted to feel the soft enclosure of a dark car pushing down on us and the warmth of a hot meal.

At some point in the last 6 months, Cane’s opened a store in the loop right near Millennium Park, where The Bean is. My sister and mom came to visit so we went for a long walk through the park to see The Bean, walked down to the lake, and made a long loop back near the river and down again. We ordered the Caniac combo and replaced the coleslaw with another piece of toast (I’m sorry, that coleslaw is not good) and had ourselves a big beautiful beige meal to share. It was one of the first nice days of spring and the park was bustling with locals and tourists. We managed to find a quiet corner hidden away in some tall shrubs and feasted. It was nice to participate in this ritual again. To chomp down on some particularly delicious chicken fingers with my family and listen to birds chirp. 

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