Critic’s Special: Raising Cane’s

1136 Miamisburg-Centerville Rd.
Dayton, OH 45459
937.306.7704
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Oilman-turned-fisherman-turned-restaurant owner Todd Graves did more that open a restaurant when he created Raising Cane’s. This chain has attracted a cult following and wherever it goes, people get crazy. This week its first location opens in Dayton, Ohio, and opening day was met with lines out the door and a drive through that has a constant security detail, with traffic headed around the block.

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Raising Cane’s focuses its menu almost entirely around one thing: good chicken fingers. Everything on the menu is built around that, these tenders are breaded and fried all in-house. In fact everything is made in-house to a special kind of quality standard. Fresh squeezed lemonade. Crinkle cut fries. If you’re coming in here, you’d better be planning to have some of those tenders first. Something really great on the menu for sure.

So how do they stack up? Yes, the secret is in the marinade on those tenders, very savory and very peppery. The right thing to do with these is to dip them in the house-made Cane’s Sauce, the tangy and slightly spicy stuff that Cane’s fanatics are obsessed with. It’s great stuff. The rest of the dishes on the menu are basically built around these things; the sandwich is just chicken tenders on a bun. It makes sense to do a few things and do them extremely well here.

The restaurant has that casual vibe that’s just so darn easy to like. You get your food at the counter, they bring it to you, you’re done. Casual concepts are all the rage these days, but this one is a bit different; it’s not a menu that is easy to customize. You also don’t have a lot of options if you aren’t looking to have fried chicken — this isn’t a menu with salads on it. Just make sure you know what you’re getting into! That chicken really is worth trying.

Recommendations

• The place caters if you love those chicken tenders. Just make sure you don’t forget to get the Cane’s sauce, it’s part of the magic.
• Lemonade is really worth a try also, it’s fresh-squeezed and there’s next to nowhere you get to find that anymore.
• Make sure everyone’s in the mood for chicken, not much else on the menu here!