This Discontinued Chick-Fil-A Dessert Deserves A Revival

Fans of Chick-fil-A largely agree that the chicken is the main attraction. Other menu items also get plenty of attention, including the waffle fries, but not every well-liked menu mainstay stuck around forever. Chick-fil-A has replaced a number of customer favorites over the years, including one dessert that people liked so much, the restaurant eventually released the recipe for it.

Chick-fil-A's lemon meringue pie, which it simply called a lemon pie, technically existed before Chick-fil-A itself. It was a popular dessert at founder Truett Cathy's first restaurant, the Dwarf House, an Atlanta eatery he opened in 1946. Made from scratch with whole ingredients, it joined the debut Chick-fil-A menu in 1967 and stayed there for decades. But not everything can last forever.

Customers were dismayed when Chick-fil-A discontinued the lemon pie in 2012 to make room for a more modernized menu. Prolonged fandom led the fast food chain to finally release the original recipe in 2023, but you won't find it at Chick-fil-A anymore. There is, however, one place where you can still have this particular lemon pie served to you.

Nearly 15 years after being pulled off the menu, Chick-fil-A's popular lemon pie is still available from the restaurant that started it all, the Dwarf House in Atlanta. Cathy's first restaurant has remained open since its founding, and also serves other discontinued Chick-fil-A menu items like coleslaw and chicken salad. But if you're not in Atlanta, the only way to have this pie is to make it yourself.

To make Chick-fil-A's lemon pie, it helps to have the right equipment, even if it isn't anything too sophisticated. You have to use the right kind of bowl for making a meringue; a copper bowl is best, because the metal itself will help stabilize the meringue on a molecular level, though stainless steel also works. Metal is best because the bowl must have absolutely no grease in it, and porous materials (including plastic) are impossible to get as grease-free as needed.

There are other helpful tips for baking the perfect lemon meringue pie to consider, as well. Among them, be sure to blind bake the crust, seal it with egg wash, get the curd appropriately thick, and use real, fresh-squeezed lemon juice — just like Chick-fil-A used to, and the Dwarf House still does.