fried chicken – Up in the Nusair

Fast Food March 2, 2018

McDonald’s Around the World: Thailand Edition

Yep, another country, another visit to McDonald’s. Let’s do this.

First up: the McD Patongko. This is just a tube-shaped piece of fried bread. I had something similar to this (called a youtiao) from a street vendor in China. Though that version was actually quite good on its own, this one seemed like it would have been much improved with a dipping sauce of some sort. It was very plain. But it was fine, I guess?

Next: the Bacon & Pepper Chicken Cheesy Egg Bun. I quite liked this one; it’s basically a cheesy omelette sandwich with a fried chicken patty and some bacon. The fried chicken patty wasn’t great, but the omelette was satisfyingly cheesy and gooey, and the bacon was above average. I want a cheesy omelette in every burger I have from McDonald’s from now on. I’m going to need someone to make that happen.

I saw a bunch of people in the restaurant eating the Big Spicy Fried Chicken, so I figured I should probably try that too. It certainly earns the “Big” part of its name — it was an absolutely massive piece of fried chicken consisting of a thigh with some white meat attached. It was extremely Popeyes-esque, with an aggressively crunchy outer layer. But it was barely spicy at all, sadly.

For dessert, I tried the Corn Pie, because how can you not try something called a corn pie? It wasn’t great. It was crispy and fried, at least, but the filling was basically just corn-flavoured glop. There were also a bunch of pieces of corn in there.

I also got the Jelly Trio Chocolate, which is a chocolate sundae with strawberry jelly at the bottom. This was way better than I was expecting; the jelly was on the chewier side, and it paired surprisingly well with the ice cream and the sauce. Berries and chocolate is a pretty classic combination, so I guess I shouldn’t be surprised it works as well as it does.

Fast Food February 12, 2018

McDonald’s Around the World: Hong Kong Edition

The menu at McDonald’s in Hong Kong is kind of boring; nothing particularly jumped out at me. But I’m way too deep into this McDonald’s around the world thing to stop now, so yeah — I got a couple of things.

The first thing I got is the Loaded Fries with Guacamole and Tomato Salsa Sauce (that name just rolls off the tongue, doesn’t it?). I think someone needs to tell McDonald’s Hong Kong that fries with a bit of sauce on them and a tiny cup of guacamole on the side doesn’t quite count as “loaded.”

This was fine, I guess. The tomato salsa sauce was pretty tasty — it basically tasted like a very cumin-tinged hot sauce — but the guacamole was watery and bland.

The other thing I tried is the Spicy Jalapeno Chicken Burger. This was actually pretty bad. The jalapeno slices and jalapeno tomato relish were zingy and spicy, but it’s also topped with a very thick slice of pineapple which absolutely overwhelmed the sandwich with sweetness.

The worst part was the chicken itself. Though the exterior was nice and crispy, it was ridiculously dry on the inside. I finished this, but I’m really not sure why.

Restaurants January 20, 2018

Amazing Japanese Curry in Tokyo

Curry isn’t necessarily the first thing that comes to mind when you think about Japanese food, but yeah, they love it here. And if a hole-in-the-wall joint called Kitchen Nankai is any indication, that love is very much justified. Like pretty much all of the food I’ve had in Tokyo, it’s good.

There isn’t a single word of English to be found anywhere in the restaurant, but — as is fairly common in Japan — they have plastic replicas of their dishes in a display out front. This is a godsend for clueless travelers such as myself; the grizzled older lady who runs the place followed me outside, I pointed, and that was that (in retrospect, I probably could have just said “katsu curry” and saved her a trip outside. Oh well).

The place specializes in katsu curry, which is a deep-fried chicken cutlet and a side of rice that’s been slathered in a tasty curry sauce.

That curry was bonkers. It was so good. I’ve never had anything quite like it — it had a really rich, beefy flavour, and tasted more like a long-simmered chili or a stew than like any curry I’ve had before. It was also spicy enough to get some sweat going, but not so spicy as to distract from the flavour.

The chicken katsu was the perfect vehicle for the curry; it was perfectly tender, and crispy enough to stand up to the deluge of sauce. It would have been delicious on its own, but with that curry it was out of this world.

Restaurants December 24, 2017

So Much Fried Chicken

I was at the Gukje Market in Busan, a huge street market that sells, among many other things, a variety of street food. Nothing was particularly catching my eye until I saw a restaurant on the outskirts of the market serving up some seriously delicious-looking fried chicken. Korean fried chicken (or, confusingly, KFC for short. I was on a food forum once, and someone was asking where the best KFC could be found in Toronto, and I was thinking “uh… at… KFC…?” until I realized he was talking about Korean fried chicken) is kind of a big deal. So I figured I’d check it out.

By the time I realized that this place only served enormous plates of fried chicken meant to be shared among multiple people, I was already sitting at a table and felt like I was committed, so I just went for it and got the original/spicy combo plate. I ordered a beer, too, because if you’re going to eat a sharing plate of fried chicken by yourself, you may as well be drinking a beer.

And yeah, as I suspected, it was a ridiculous amount of fried chicken for one person. I did my best — I ate most of the spicy chicken, and made a small dent in the original. The rest I brought back to the hotel to eat later.

Sadly, though, it wasn’t the fried chicken perfection I was hoping for. It was fine — it particular, the sauce on the spicy chicken was sweet, spicy, garlicky, and delicious — but it was all white meat with a few wings thrown in, and it was overcooked and dry.

It’s also cut in that typically Asian style of chopping up chicken into small, ostensibly bite-sized pieces of meat that aren’t actually bite-sized, because if you try to eat them in one bite there’s a very good chance you’re going to end up crunching down on some configuration of bones and/or cartilage. But it’s almost impossible to tell what’s what when it’s battered and fried like this, so you just have to take tentative little bites until you figure out what’s going on inside of each piece, and then try to navigate around tiny little bone shards and cartilage fragments.

Sorry, everyone in Asia, but the way you cut up chicken is absurd. Either give me deboned bite-sized chunks, or give me full pieces that I know what to do with. There is no third option.

Fast Food December 10, 2017

McDonald’s Around the World: China Edition

McDonald’s in China is an absolute treasure trove of menu oddities. It’s amazing. There were a few countries where I struggled to find even one or two things that I wanted to order; meanwhile, there was so much stuff I wanted to try in China that I actually wound up having two separate meals at McDonald’s.

Up first: the Jumbo Wing, which is literally just a full chicken wing that’s been skewered on a wooden stick. It’s not bad. The meat has a salty, almost cured flavour — it’s definitely been brined in something. The skin could have been more crispy, but it was a pretty good wing. I guess there’s nothing particularly odd about a chicken wing, but this really seemed like a strange thing to be eating at McDonald’s.

The next thing I tried was the Italy Stewed Flavour Big Chicken Cutlet. This is basically just the chicken from a fried chicken sandwich, but without the sandwich. Eating it like this just made me miss the sandwich parts of the sandwich.

There was also the Chicken Patty Rice. This was a bowl of rice with some kind of sweet sauce, bits of mushrooms (I think — I can’t find any information about this online. That’s what it tasted like, at least), lettuce, and pieces of chicken.

This was actually quite tasty. The sauce had a slightly sour flavour to balance out the sweetness, and the chicken was dark meat (the general preference for white meat back home completely baffles me — dark meat is more tender and more flavourful. It is objectively better than white meat).

Then there was the German Beef Double Sausage Burger. I’ve mostly been skipping the burger options at the various McDonald’s I’ve been to, because for the most part, they’re pretty boring. But this one has two German sausages on it, so yeah, obviously I had to try it.

It was okay, I guess. I think the sausages were supposed to be bratwurst, and they were fine. But the two burger patties were even more dry than usual (and at McDonald’s, that’s saying something), which made it hard to enjoy. Still, the tasty horseradish mustard helped.

And finally, I tried the Passion Fruit and Peach Jumbo Cone. This was pretty good: the sauce was quite tart, contrasting well with the very sweet soft serve, and the couple of whole peach slices on top were a nice touch. I think the cone was a charcoal cone? Either that or chocolate. Either way, it didn’t taste like much, and it was slightly bitter (but not unpleasantly so). It was fine, but a cup probably would have worked a bit better — it was a mess.

Fast Food October 26, 2017

McDonald’s Around the World: England Edition

Like in France, McDonald’s menu in England is pretty boring. It’s mostly the usual suspects, though they do have something called Cheese & Herb melts that are basically just mozzarella sticks, but in nugget form.

It’s gooey fried cheese, so yeah, it’s good. It comes with what they call “Rich Tomato Dip,” which is an overly sweet marinara sauce that was way too cloying to be particularly edible.

They also have a “Great Tastes of the World” promotion running right now, so I got a fried chicken sandwich from that menu: Jamaican Chicken with Spicy Jerk Sauce. It was fine, I guess, but it basically just tasted like a standard McDonald’s fried chicken sandwich. You could barely even tell the jerk sauce was there, and it certainly wasn’t spicy.