There’s no better place to be a chicken tender fan than Manchester, New Hampshire.

After months of friendly competition, countless chicken tenders, and plenty of passport stamps, Diz’s has been voted Best Chicken Tenders in the 2026 Tender Townies Chicken Tenders Passport Program.

For us, this award means more than winning a contest. It’s about being part of a city that has embraced something uniquely its own.

Manchester’s reputation as Tender Town began with Nick Lavallee, the original Mayor of Tender Town, who started the effort that culminated in 2023 to put Manchester on the map as the Chicken Tender Capital of the World. What began as Nick’s passion project has grown into something much bigger, with the Tender Townies continuing to celebrate Manchester’s chicken tender culture and the restaurants that make it special.

And, of course, none of this story would exist without Puritan Backroom, the Manchester restaurant that created the chicken tender. Their invention became a local legend and eventually a food phenomenon, giving Manchester a pretty delicious claim to fame.

At Diz’s, our own chicken tender story began on April 21, 2023, during our Celebrity Restaurateur with Peter White event. Peter is the host of The Morning Show on WMNH. The Celebrity Restaurateur events are fundraisers, with each celebrity choosing a nonprofit to receive the funds raised during their event, and developing their own menu. Peter stepped into the kitchen as part of the community effort surrounding Manchester’s growing Tender Town identity. He chose to feature chicken tenders for the special occasion, and our customers had something to say about them. They quickly became a favorite and earned a permanent place on our menu.

Since then, our tenders have become part of our own Diz’s story and, this winter, we teamed up with the New Hampshire Fisher Cats to help promote their own chicken tenders for the upcoming baseball season. We gave away Fisher Cats tickets when customers ordered Diz’s Tenders, combining two things Manchester loves: chicken tenders and baseball.

A Passport Full of Manchester

This year’s Tender Townies Chicken Tenders Passport Program brought together an incredible group of local restaurants and gave residents and visitors a delicious reason to explore Manchester one tender at a time.

The 2026 participants were:

Puritan Backroom
Red Arrow Diner
Goldenrod Drive In
The Shaskeen
Pappy’s Pizza & Subs
Charlie’s
The Hill Bar & Grille
Stark Brewing Co.
Harpoon Brewing
Fisher Cats Concessions
Diz’s
Write In Campaign

We want to give a huge thank you to every restaurant that participated. Each one brought its own take on the chicken tender, and that’s what makes this so much fun. It was friendly competition, but it was also a celebration of the incredible variety of restaurants and local businesses that make Manchester such a great place to eat.

We’re honored that our guests chose Diz’s as their favorite, but we’re just as proud to stand alongside every restaurant that participated. Every passport stop gave people another reason to get out, explore Manchester, support a local business, and enjoy a chicken tender.

And that’s what we love most about Tender Town.

It’s not really about one restaurant having the “best” tender. It’s about what happens when a community gets behind a fun idea and runs with it.

So thank you to Nick Lavallee for starting the Tender Town movement, to the Tender Townies for keeping it growing, to Puritan Backroom for creating the chicken tender right here in Manchester, and to every restaurant that joined in this year’s passport.

And most of all, thank you to everyone who visited Diz’s, ordered our tenders, filled out a passport, voted for us, or simply helped spread the word.

Here’s to Manchester, Tender Town, and many more years of celebrating local restaurants, one chicken tender at a time.