Newspaper students Matthew Wilson, 12, Sofi Rao, 12, and myself, 12, along with Makenna Thomas,12, went to some popular fast-food chains in Tampa in order to determine who had the best chicken nuggets. We hit McDonald’s, Chick-Fil-A, Checkers, and Sonic before deciding who served the best nuggets.

“Chick-Fil-A’s were definitely the best. They were the only ones that felt like real chicken and the sauce makes them so much better than the other ones,” Wilson said.

A clearly biased Wilson seems to have voted based off sauce preference, rather than nugget quality. Nonetheless, Wilson seems to think that Chick-Fil-A offered the most authentic chicken. Based off texture, he was for them all the way, but when it came to flavor, McDonald’s was a close second.

“I feel like McDonald’s has a reputation of having fake chicken, but their nuggets were by far the best of all the fast-food restaurants,” Thomas said.

Thomas leaned more towards McDonald’s nuggets, arguing that they were the only ones that she liked without sauce. For all the other nuggets, she felt that they were dry and lacked a good flavor without sauce.

“My favorite was Chick-Fil-A and my least favorite were Sonic. I’ve never heard of anyone eat Sonic chicken nuggets and now I know why,” Rao said.

Rao was clearly not a fan of Sonic nuggets. She argued that they were too fried and did not taste like chicken at all. She thought they were good quality but just did not have a good taste.

Overall, our final rankings were (first to last) Chick-Fil-A, McDonald’s, Checkers and Sonic. We learned lots about how texture, flavor, and sauce can impact a restaurant’s chicken nuggets.

Personally, my favorite were the McDonald’s nuggets or the Checkers nuggets. Based off flavor, I liked McDonald’s the best, but I was not a fan of the texture. I enjoyed the size of Checkers’ nuggets and thought they tasted good (especially dunked in ranch).