Chick-fil-a has a new vegetarian menu item.
Mike Stewart, Associated Press
Chick-fil-A is swapping chicken for cauliflower.
The fast-food chain’s newest menu item, the “Chick-fil-A Cauliflower Sandwich,” will begin testing in three cities next week as the chain’s first plant-based sandwich.
“Guests told us they wanted to add more vegetables into their diets, and they wanted a plant-forward entrée that tasted uniquely Chick-fil-A,” said Leslie Neslage, the chain’s director of menu and packaging, in a statement, per CNN.
Even though the newest sandwich is chicken-free, it will still have many of the iconic Chick-fil-A flavors fans love. It is breaded and seasoned just like the famous chicken, pressure cooked and placed between a buttery bun with two pickles.
“We didn’t know we necessarily wanted it to be similar to the chicken experience or the experience of eating a chicken sandwich, but we knew it had to taste like Chick-fil-A,” Chef Stuart Tracy, senior lead culinary developer for Chick-fil-A, told USA Today.
For years, the fast-food chain has been developing its first vegetarian sandwich. And cauliflower proved to be the best chicken substitute.
“We explored every corner of the plant-based space in search of the perfect centerpiece for our plant-forward entrée,” Chick-fil-A culinary lead Stuart Tracy said in a statement. “Time and time again, we kept returning to cauliflower as the base of our sandwich.”
According to CNBC, starting Monday, the sandwich will go on trial in Denver, Colorado; Charleston, South Carolina; and the Greensboro-Triad region of North Carolina.