The Atlanta Braves Will Apparently Serve Whole Fried Chickens This Season

Opening Day is upon us, as Major League Baseball teams around the league will begin their 162-game campaigns on Thursday. With baseball starting comes baseball concessions announcements.

Stadium food has become part of the draw for baseball as part of a never-ending arms race for who can create the most gluttonous, artery-clogging concoctions to sell at exorbitant prices to fans. Each year there are things like massive hot dogs topped with fried macaroni and cheese that get unveiled, but in Atlanta, gluttony at the ballpark is a time-honored tradition and an art form.

Previous items served to Braves fans include wonders such as a giant cheeseburger served between two personal pepperoni pizzas, but this year, they’re upping the ante. On Wednesday, SunTrust Park unleashed its new food items on the world, including something called a chicken and waffle boat that I have to admit is intriguing, but that’s not the fried chicken item I want to discuss.

No, Braves fans will also be able to purchase an entire fried chicken this season at the ballpark. Not, like, eight pieces of fried chicken. Just a whole bird fried up for you to figure out how to eat in your seat.

I get the appeal of this, particularly for the concessions folks. Whole birds are cheaper than buying them broken down, because they are a pain in the ass to break down yourself. So, the Braves will go for the win-win of getting the cheaper whole chicken and then not breaking it down at all, instead breading it and dunking it in a vat of hot oil — while still surely charging an unbelievable sum.

As someone that loves fried chicken, I also understand the appeal of this as the consumer, but the more I consider it the more I feel like this is not going to be a worthwhile purchase at the ballpark. You’ll spend most of a couple innings trying to pick at this chicken and there’s no way it’s all going to be well cooked. When frying chicken, you have to cook the dark meat longer than the white meat, which means to get this whole bird up to proper eating temp, the white meat seems almost assured to dry out on you because this isn’t like roasting a bird where you can baste in order to keep the moisture level right.

All of this is to say plenty of people will buy this whole fried chicken to take pictures of it to post to Instagram, because it will make for quite the social media flex. However, don’t be surprised when those breasts are dry and you’re struggling to get all the meat off there.