The chicken tender turns 50 this year. This may surprise you if you're younger than that and grew up seeing tenders in every school cafeteria, food court, airport and diner, but older Americans can remember a time when tenders were not a thing. To understand how tenders took over the nation, I went to their birthplace, Manchester, New Hampshire, aka Tender Town. First stop was the @puritanbackroom, where they have been on the menu since 1974; the classic version is served in a simple breading with the Puritan's take on duck sauce. (It's yellowish and tastes a bit like applesauce.) Other stops: the Goldenrod (2); the round-the-clock @redarrow24diner (3,4); Magoo's drive-in across the river in Goffstown (5,6); and Vintage Pizza (7,8), locally renowned for "Asian tenders," a distant relative of General Tso's chicken. For all this and much more, see "How the Chicken Tender Conquered America" on nytimes.com (link in bio).
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