It probably wouldn’t take some kind of culinary expert to discern if a meal comes from a fast food restaurant or not, but a restaurant in California recently got caught passing off Popeyes chicken as its own when a customer apparently saw employees literally carrying in boxes of those good Louisiana tenders. The restaurant in question is Sweet Dixie Kitchen in Long Beach, and FoodBeast and Longbeachzine (via Eater) say that the customer actually asked an employee about the chicken and supposedly received confirmation that they serve reheated Popeyes with their chicken and waffles. That’s weird and silly, and probably very irritating for people who end up spending $13 on fast food chicken, but there’s an even weirder twist to this.
As it turns out, Sweet Dixie Kitchen is totally proud to serve food from Popeyes, and someone from the restaurant responded to an unsurprisingly negative Yelp review from the whistleblower by saying that Popeyes sells “the best fried chicken anywhere and from New Orleans.” The restaurant owner also shared a lengthy message on Facebook that reiterates the “it’s good chicken, who cares” point and points out that it’s common restaurant practice to use outside sources for specific ingredients. Essentially, Sweet Dixie is equating the use of fast food chicken with serving local-made Long Beach mustard or whatever that comes from a farmer’s market.
The bigger issue here, though, is that it doesn’t actually say on the menu that Sweet Dixie serves Popeyes chicken, which Eater notes is a “potential health code violation.” Then there’s the likelihood that Popeyes itself didn’t approve of this, which is a whole different issue. Still, if you don’t mind paying a bit of extra cash for some of those spicy Louisiana chicken bits, you can probably do worse than a weirdly honest brunch spot in Long Beach.