Stand Up Burgers’s Buffalo Popcorn Chickin’

I was 700 words into a blog post on the compostability of egg cartons when my phone buzzed. It was Outlook alerting me that I’d received a new email from Doordash. The subject line was what piqued my interest: “25% OFF + 2 orders = 😍.” How do you pass up an offer like that? Whatever that heart-eyes emoji was feeling, I wanted to feel it too — especially after spending a full day toiling over search-engine-optimized articles for my work as a freelance writer, each topic of interest I researched duller than the last.

I reasoned that one discounted delivery dinner couldn’t hurt my line of credit too badly. I’d been toiling over the egg carton article for nearly three hours; my brain felt like soup, and I was ready for a meal that had nothing to do with chickens or their damned eggs. Besides, I was being paid three cents a word to explain that yes — paper is, in fact, biodegradable. Treating myself would wind up a net positive experience! Eco-conscious Googlers everywhere would be enlightened on the joys of composting, and I would wind up with a full belly and a few extra bucks in my checking.

I knew immediately where I was ordering from: Stand-Up Burgers, a budding vegan fast-food chain with a location in Lakeview East. According to Google Maps, the restaurant is less than 20 minutes from my dorm room, but unlike Google Maps, I’m well aware that relying on the L’s punctuality will get you nowhere. In reality, getting the order myself entailed much more than I was willing to take on that particular evening.

First, I’d wait for the Brown Line under a half-powered heat lamp, huddled with four people wearing masks under their noses (5–10 minutes). Then, more waiting — this time for a bus that inevitably wouldn’t come (20–∞ minutes). Realizing I had no choice but to walk, I’d violently curse the CTA, frightening passersby, while I steeled myself for the half-mile trek headlong into unobstructed January gusts off the lake (2–3 minutes). Twelve to 15 sullen minutes later, I’d arrive at the restaurant only to turn right back around and repeat the entire trip in reverse, in pitch darkness, arriving home with frostbitten digits and a cold dinner.

This is the exact scenario Doordash exists for.

I decided to try Stand-Up’s new buffalo popcorn “chickin’”: fried, drenched in lurid orange sauce, and served with plant-based blue cheese dressing. In my experience, vegan chicken is horrible. I’ve tried Impossible nuggets, Stand-Up’s own “Freebird” with its not-chicken patty, and a million other botched imitations — no matter what type of faux chicken I order, I’m always left feeling as though consuming a bucket of KFC dark meat followed by a McChicken for dessert would’ve been more enjoyable. But I approach each new plant-based junk food the same way I do new relationships: eagerly and with optimism — no matter how disappointing its predecessors.

$10.64 for the chickin’, plus a crushing $7.72 in fees (for what, I’ll never know). And a tip for the driver, of course: ever since I’d spent the previous spring as a Dasher, I’d vowed to combat the epidemic of $0.00 tippers (there are a ton of them). My profit from the egg carton article had dwindled to a measly two bucks. Then, I remembered the email that started it all! Gleefully, I typed out, “25offtwo.” The promo code box flashed red.

“This promotional offer is not available to you.”

Uh-oh.

“25OFFTWO?”

No luck. I sat back in my chair with a huff. They had emailed me! How dare Doordash swindle me like this? But this must’ve been their plan all along, because they had me now. I needed Stand-Up’s chickin’ — no matter the cost. My stomach gurgled its assent. Defeated and discountless, I placed the order.

300 words later, I sat at my kitchen table and opened the to-go box. There were eight bite-sized pieces of lukewarm chickin’ and two containers of sauce: buffalo and blue cheese. Cleverly, I’d requested the sauces on the side to preserve the chickin’’s crispiness during transit. Cracking open the largest container, I found that the nuggets were eerily odorless, but when I popped the lid off the buffalo sauce, the smell of vinegar stung my nose. Deterred by neither discovery, I drizzled the sauce over the chickin’ and shook the container to coat the nuggets evenly. With a plastic fork, I dipped my first piece into the blue cheese dressing.

The chickin’ itself was springy in texture and impressively moist. The buffalo sauce, overwhelmingly tangy, had a mild bite, and the blue cheese dressing was as pungent and chalky as the real thing. As I made my way through the nuggets, though, I began to feel sick at the taste of the blue cheese and on my next bite opted to isolate the taste of the buffalo sauce.

It was far too vinegary, and not nearly spicy enough to live up to its name. On Wikipedia, I learned buffalo sauce contains Worcestershire sauce, which typically has anchovies in it. Had Stand-Up made its own vegan Worcestershire too? I hoped so. If not, they’d compromised a lot of vegan and vegetarian diets.

The novelty of the chickin’ had worn off and the buffalo sauce began to taste how I imagine Windex would. Before vegetarianism, I’d had more of an affinity for barbecue wings; I remembered this as I chewed. I thought back to grade school lunches, the cardboard trays laden with actual popcorn chicken — greasy and flavorless, yet infinitely superior to the meal before me.

Reluctantly, I found myself returning to the blue cheese for my next nugget. The chickin’ itself tasted the best of the three components of my meal, not so much because of its flavor but rather due to a lack thereof. By the fifth or sixth piece, I was struggling, but pressed onward and finished every bite of my 25-dollar chickin’. My stomach whimpered pitifully, the two of us equally plagued by nausea and remorse.

I don’t recommend Stand-Up’s buffalo popcorn chickin’. Furthermore, I encourage you to avoid their buffalo sauce altogether. Stand-Up would be better off sticking to their namesake: they make a mean not-cheeseburger.

That night, even fifteen minutes of frenzied brushing and mouthwash-gargling later, the buffalo sauce haunted my taste buds. Somehow I fell into a fitful night’s sleep, my frugal Jewish father’s disappointed voice echoing in my ears. Loath as I am to admit it, he was right — there is food at home. To add insult to injury, I spent the next morning implementing even more SEO terms into the egg carton article as per the client’s revisions of what I’d submitted.

Perhaps modern technology doesn’t yet allow for the perfect plant-based buffalo chicken replica; then again, maybe it’s out there somewhere already. Whatever the case may be, it certainly isn’t at Stand-Up. The search continues.