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2016-12-19
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The menu is somewhat unconventional: no starters really, mostly a fried chicken section with several preparation styles, main courses including kimchi fried rice, topbokki and spaghetti carbonara to name a few, and drinks. The place doesn't have a liquor license yet, so we had to get 2 beers from the convenience store.This place is famous for their fried chicken and quite a few reviews in Cantonese have a positive feedback. If you had fried chicken before, you know that a good fried chicken has
This place is famous for their fried chicken and quite a few reviews in Cantonese have a positive feedback. If you had fried chicken before, you know that a good fried chicken has a nice crispy batter around it and is not oily on the inside.
We ordered 2 dishes to share:
"Original" fried chicken (78$ for half chicken)
This dish was bland. No batter or breading or anything around it. Maybe they rubbed some powder on the skin but i'm not even sure. The chicken was basically thrown in the fryer, and as a result the chicken meat was oily. We got a half chicken and the pieces of chicken were pretty small. As an accompaniment, there was some shredded raw cabbage with ketchup, a little weird. Seriously, if you want good Korean style fried chicken, I strongly recommend you to try BBQ Premium Chicken in Causeway Bay. It's incomparable. Or, just go to KFC.
Topbokki (78$)
I had amazing topbokki in Korea a few months ago, cheap and cheerful, tasty and so savory. It's like hotpot over there: the ingredients come raw (veggies, noodles, rice cakes, gochujang paste, chili powder, etc...), and boils down on a portable stove. I was therefore excited to have it again.
The dish came after only 5 minutes, in a single bowl and consisted of a soup super heavy in chili powder (you could actually taste and feel the powder in your mouth), rice cakes and green onion sprinkled on top. One third of the rice cakes were under cooked. I could really have done better just by buying rice cakes and Gochujang paste at Park n Shop, It was really insulting for the real Topbokki dish which requires time for the ingredients to cook and the flavor to build. Their Topbokki tasted like it was just made instantly and thrown in a microwave.
At this point, we were still hungry but decided to stop and get dessert at home. This dinner was a waste of our time and a bad experience overall.
The restaurant itself doesn't have much charm: a red wall on the left, a couple of TVs on each corner blasting K-POP video clips, a bar dining area (both facing bar and outside) and a couple of tables overly lit by ceiling spots. The stool next to me was dirty (some kind of soft drink on it i think) and there were cartons lying around in the corners of the restaurant.
The staff didn't seem like they had worked in the restaurant business before, although the girl that greeted us was rather friendly. We went a bit before 7pm and were the first customers of the night. The owner (we think he was) seemed a little smug and spent his time sitting at the bar looking at his phone.
I don't give this place more than 10 months before they get out of business.
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