The combination of fried chicken and waffles has been around since the 1940s by most reports. Popeyes Louisiana Kitchen has been serving fried chicken since 1972.

Yesterday, Popeyes Louisiana Kitchen released the Chicken Waffle Tender to the masses. It’s a logical match and sets your mouth to watering.

These are to Popeyes as the Doritos Locos Taco were to Taco Bell. Take one of your core products and “jazz it up”. My experience when first trying each of these was the same. The idea of each sounds like it would taste phenomenal but I was left slightly underwhelmed by both. With both of these products, I think the hype was just too much. Consider this video that Popeyes put together.

See? Most of these people seem to be experiencing a life-changing moment when they bite into the tender. Have they ever had a regular tender from Popeyes? They are pretty darn good. The new tenders are good. Are they life-changing? We had them in the office yesterday and the consensus was they were not.

Like with the normal tenders from Popeyes, the chicken is juicy and the batter isn’t too thick. With these you get a hint of syrup in the batter. I wouldn’t say amazing but I definitely was satisfied with my lunch choice.

You know what the most amazing part of the meal was? Dipping a Popeyes biscuit into the honey-maple dipping sauce that comes with the new tenders. In retrospect, I probably should have used a knife to slather the biscuit with the sauce, but once I got the idea and dunked the biscuit, I just wanted to do it again, not stop to go find a knife.

The reviews were pretty favorable as well. The reviewer over at Kotaku loved how the tenders smelled, seemed just alright with the taste of the tender without the sauce and then was blown away by how the tenders tasted with the sauce. He did his review on camera so check that out.  The new tenders scored quite well on the GrubGrade scale, getting a 9.25 out of 10.

I’m not a food critic so, the advice I leave you with is go try these for yourself. If you’ve never had a tender from Popeyes, I think you will be really impressed by these. I also advise you to sweet-talk the folks behind the counter and try to substitute a second biscuit for the fries in your combo meal. That’s what I did and it was probably the best decision I made all day. At $4.99 for a 3-piece meal with fries and a biscuit, it’s a pretty good deal. These are being billed as a limited-time offer as opposed to a regular menu item. Popeyes apparently doesn’t publish nutritional information for limited-time offers.{UPDATED} A meal of just three tenders weighs in at 340 calories, 14 grams of fat and 1350 mg of sodium. Consuming the biscuit and fries that come with the meal would add another 530 calories to that.

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