Raising Cane's Chicken Fingers — Restaurant in Enfield

Raising Cane's has expanded to Enfield and has been a rave through the first few months of it's opening! I'll start with my main positive takeaways.

The space is extremely clean and well kept, and the new space is a refreshing change from the typical corporate fast food and often neglected layout that Western Massachusetts is used to. Multiple clean restrooms, lots of space to eat inside and outside (with a covering in case of rain or suboptimal weather), and two functional drive through lanes. Service was good and the line moves productively-we got our food quite quickly! There is ample parking. The hours are extremely competitive and in my opinion, is one of the only reasons that would lead me to return to Cane's. Several nearby competitors close far earlier, and their main competitor closes at 10PM and is opened 6 days per week compared to Cane's 7. Plus, even if other chains are open for drive through service past midnight, many of their dining rooms have limited functionality and dine-in services end much sooner than Cane's as well (which has both drive-through and dine in service open from 10AM-midnight every weekday)! I highly recommend taking advantage of the new dining space, especially during the summertime where parties can choose to eat either inside or outside.

Onto the food; I have gotten both the Caniac Combo with a large iced tea and a smaller custom order 4 pieces of chicken finger and large lemonade. The Caniac Combo was around $17, which is a really steep price for the product given. The latter order was $10, which is just not acceptable (even if it isn't a combo meal, which we'll get to).

The Caniac Combo (pictured): 6 chicken fingers, fries, two sauce sides, coleslaw, toast, large drink. The chicken was simple and was prepared relatively well. It was not dry, the crust was up to par, though the taste was completely unremarkable. Your only hope to add any taste is to use the one sauce made available by Cane's (which is like a salty mayo), and if you aren't a fan of it, you're out of luck. I have gotten both iced tea and lemonade, which are both quite good-though if you order lemonade, make sure you ask for it when ordering as they don't enable customers to get it themselves (they keep it behind the register!). The cup was mostly full of ice, though you're able to refill everything besides the lemonade. The lemonade also costs extra as a replacement to the soft drink with any combo, so beware! The chicken and the lemonade or iced tea were the most remarkable parts of the meal, and the lemonade itself as an option is riddled with stipulations and extra costs-I'd encourage customers to get the fountain drink option and have iced tea, with free refills!

Onto the fries, coleslaw, and toast. The fries were the most disappointing part of the experience and were not only unremarkable, but simply poor quality. No crunch, the fries were relatively soggy with basically uniform consistency (vs a crunchy outside and a soft inside), and even the sauce could not save them. The issue is not these fries on their own, but that Cane's main competitor has excellent fries as do many of it's other local fast food equivalents. The coleslaw is an unremarkable side (and was served in a small side cup), though it's perhaps a refreshing step away from the generic fast food options. The Texas Toast was literally just a buttered piece of bread-not good, not inedible, just unremarkable. My second order entailed just 4 pieces of chicken and a large lemonade; after deciding to hold off on the sides (which I felt were pointless), I realized that my order was just as expensive as some of the combos. If you go to Cane's, your only financially reasonable option is to select one of the combos vs getting only chicken and paying the same price.

Go to Cane's if you're really craving fast food/chicken/their drinks and are looking for an option that is clean and has great hours. However, there's still much to improve in terms...

I waited over a month since opening to try Raising Cane's due to the extremely long lines. I figured it must be great! Well it falls short in almost every way. When I went there were maybe 8-10 cars in the drive through lane. They have two speakers to order at that immediately turn to one lane on a sharp curve afterwards, terrible design. It definitely favors the lane closest to the building, so you have to hope that the car in that lane won't cut you off if you ordered before them and there's a line to the payment window. There were two people inside the payment window when I got to it, yet some people were sitting at it for more than a minute while the pickup window was moving fast. Not sure what was going on with that as I got through in maybe 30 seconds and the food was ready at the next window and I drove off. The people working there were friendly, but something is obviously wrong with the design here. From arriving in line to getting my food was somewhere between 10 and 15 minutes. For a place with minimal items on the menu, this seems like a long time given the 8-10 cars that were in the queue. Now onto the food. I ordered the 3 finger combo. I don't understand the people that waited for hours for this. The chicken tenders were fine, they had tender and moist chicken inside with a light crunch and decent flavor. However, they are very small and felt like something that should have been part of a kids menu rather than an adult entree. The sauce is basically ketchup, mayo and heavy pepper from what I could taste from the overpowered pepper. Certainly nothing that I would crave on a regular basis. The "Texas toast" was nothing more than a grilled New England style hot dog bun without a cut in the top. Tastes ok, but just saying. The fries were extremely salty, like enough to do 3-4 orders at a normal restaurant. They were somewhat soft, but this could have been partially from the transportation to my house about 6 minutes away. The real star here was the lemonade. It had great flavor and wasn't overly sweet, you could tell it wasn't just a powdered mix or some Coke machine lemonade. Overall, I'm glad I tried it, but won't be going back. With a much bigger menu, Popeye's next door has my $$ the next time I'm craving...

First time I tried Cane’s was on their 2nd day of opening and it was awful. Waited in that drive-thru line for over a hour and despite asking for extra crispy tenders and fries, I got soggy chicken, breading barely holding on, and limp, cold fries. Not to mention the cane sauce that everyone hyped about was overly salty + gross.

Tried it again 2 weeks later, 35 min wait in line, chicken and fries were crispier, but tasted like they’d been fried in old grease. It’s noticeable because Cane’s doesn’t season anything. I’m thinking they just expect the cane sauce to carry, which btw was still awful. Too salty and this time like they accidentally dumped too much black pepper in it.

I’m either a glutton for punishment or stupidly optimistic because despite already having two bad experiences I decided to try them again!! This time: 10 mins wait in line, my chicken was XTRA CRISPY + hot + fresh + tender + moist ! Fries were also good, and instead of cane sauce I got their house made honey mustard and Louisiana hot sauce, which BABY yes! Now I finally see why Cane’s got its popularity.

Lastly, their Coleslaw is basic, Texas Toast is fine (ask for it BOB style), and their Arnold Palmer should be the only drink you get from here. A Box Combo: 4 tenders w/ all 3 sides and Lg AP is about $14.

Soooo, if you’re contemplating taking a long distance drive to try Cane’s I’d say now is an ok time to do so. The lines aren’t as long anymore (we had Enfield PD directing drive-thru traffic for a couple weeks) and they’ve seemed to have worked out their kinks since...