Korean food items is continue to warm, each virtually and figuratively.
There is a substantial addictive element to the cuisine that I can’t rather put my finger on. I have a buddy on social media who says he has to have kimchi frequently now. Taking into consideration the whole peninsula acts that way toward this Korean cabbage staple, I fully grasp his passion.
My sister-in-regulation from Taft spent some many years in South Korea when her spouse was in the Army and she is pretty considerably the same way, constantly up for a stop by to a Korean cafe. And wherever Bakersfield was lucky to have even a person Korean position some a long time back, we now have several decisions, the most modern we wrote about staying Bok Bok Chicken on Easton Travel off California Avenue around Freeway 99.
Our most recent Korean restaurant doesn’t even have the country’s identify in the title: Charlie’s Ridiculous Hen. Nonetheless, it has that double-fried hen that we relished at Bok Bok in a more relaxed ambiance, appropriate in the vicinity of the freeway, a pretty small eating area as part of a advantage keep setting up but, as with Bok Bok, the sauces support the hen soar.
They also offer you funky corn pet dogs (additional on these later), oddities like a croffle (a waffle supposedly produced with croissant batter), hamburgers and bingsu (Korean shaved ice).
I was bummed when we frequented that the kimchi burger ($8.95) was not out there. Seemingly, somebody, ideally not a pal of mine, eaten all the spicy cabbage. Rather, we ordered 10 pieces of Korean rooster wings ($18.95) so we could sample two sauces (Korean soy garlic and Korean honey-glazed, also known as yangnyeom), a 4-piece hen fingers ($10.95) with the mango habanero sauce, sweet potato fries with maple syrup on the aspect ($6.95) and that croffle ($6.95).
The female driving the counter warned me that it would get 16 minutes to make the rooster given that they fry it to purchase. I silently praised God that they did that. I recall my dad in his restaurant refusing to give fried rooster unless of course he could make it to get. I recognize most quick-foods chicken places really don’t do it that way.
The item at Charlie’s, being double-fried and then liberally tossed with sauce, is just almost ideal. A note of warning: Be very careful consuming the drummettes. When they trimmed the wings off the breast of the chicken, they have been a little bit sloppy about bone integrity so use warning when you are placing the best of the drumette in your mouth. Some had a very sharp bone fragment, and I managed to not attract blood.
If I experienced to title a single sauce that I’d discover addicting it’s the yangnyeom: garlic, chili flakes, soy sauce, sugar, honey and vinegar are commonly made use of, occasionally with ketchup thrown in. It’s really acquired virtually just about anything you come across first rate on the tongue, and if you have been ingesting alcohol, it will wake up the style buds, which is for confident.
The soy garlic is a little bit more conventional, and the mango habanero has all the sweet and very hot you want in a person sauce.
They also have a Mad Charlie option for those people who want an extremely spicy sauce.
You can get most sauces moderate or spicy, I went spicy, and it was not also intense. You could style the other flavors of the chicken, which I choose.
The fingers are extensive, meaty strips of breast meat that, in the tradition of all their competitors, are minimally processed and pretty delicious.
I was anticipating extra fluffy levels on my croffle, which had whipped product and strawberry sauce, but which is most likely not practical looking at a waffle iron is included. Like all the things else at Charlie’s, it is manufactured to purchase for optimum freshness.
And, for the history, my food was served in 20 minutes, not 16, but shut ample and considering that the hen was nearly way too scorching to try to eat temperature-smart, I was Okay with it.
The sweet potato fries tasted refreshing-slice, but we did not dip them in the maple syrup. Who desires that?
On a long term pay a visit to, we will sample the Korean corn puppy, a person of which is rolled in mozzarella cheese squares before frying and looks positively wonderful in its ugliness.
The ambiance is useful with some awesome murals on the wall and K-pop tunes videos enjoying on the Tv set.
Pete Tittl’s Dining Out column appears in The Californian on Sundays. E mail him at [email protected] or stick to him on Twitter: @pftittl.