I get pretty riled up about eating breakfast, due in part to the fact that I’m rarely awake during the socially acceptable hours of bacon, egg, and biscuit consumption, but more so thanks to those 3 foods and their breakfast brethren maintaining their deliciousness 24/7. It’s unfortunate that most hearty breakfasts take more effort to prepare at home than mid-day and evening meals, which is why I appreciate Denny’s, IHOP, and Waffle House giving nocturnal nerds like myself the opportunity to stumble out of our caves at 11PM for an omelette and a dozen side orders of bacon. There is however the issue of quality versus quantity. Do I want to go all American and engorge myself over an endless plate of pancakes or savor the moist, warm delight that is the coveted chicken biscuit? In this instance I went with the latter option, and despite being toted as the spicier version of Chick-fil-A’s famous morning munchable, their new biscuit was mildly impressive at best.

I’ve been championing Hardee’s breakfast since I gave them a shot about a week ago – top notch early eats. Up until that point it was an occasional McGrease sandwich from the McMorning fat factory, but I always held Chick-fil-A in high esteem because damn do they know how to make biscuits. I mean, I agree with the plethora of paranoid ad cows; Chick-fil-A chicken is fantastic and I could stand to eat moar. But there’s just something perfect about the way a piping hot Chick-fil-A biscuit only falls apart once it’s unsafely nestled between your teeth. And all the while chewing your taste buds can’t escape the clutches of a flavor and texture combination best described as buttery bliss. Given my unabashed adoration for their original biscuit, you’ll understand that my disappointment was palpable upon biting into this lie.

This is what you call spicy? Well I call foul. And I’d call the Better Business Bureau too if failure to adequately procure eyeball water from my face was a punishable offense. I’ve teared up faster listening to a story about someone else cutting onions, for crying out loud. I realize that Chick-fil-A’s intention isn’t to set their customers’ mouths ablaze, but I may as well have ordered a regular chicken biscuit and administered a quarter droplet of tabasco sauce. The taste difference would’ve been negligible. It’s most baffling to me that Chick-fil-A’s spicy chicken sandwich is an order of magnitude hotter, despite their bird meat being bagged from the same location.

Chick-fil-A, I cannot abide this biscuit. You’ve let me down. I’ll be back for your honest sandwiches like the regular and spicy chickens but this “spicy” biscuit will be foregone time and again in favor of Hardee’s. Your chicken, however scrumdiddlyumptious, completely missed the mark here. And what’s the deal with closing up shop every Sunday? Isn’t that one of the most opportune times for customers to experience your newfound definition of spicy? Personally, given a larger window of opportunity to kick my breakfast up a notch I’d still look elsewhere. Last I saw though I wasn’t the only person on planet Earth; I’ll have to double check when I go for my bi-annual 5 minutes of sunlight exposure. Until then, and more importantly until Chick-fil-A returns to the regimen of feeding its flightless livestock wasabi-coated habanero peppers, calling this new biscuit spicy is like calling a friend up and telling him he has cancer – a total dick move and (probably) not true.