That's real bacon, for real men. Your countrymen must consider a thin slice of ham to be bacon, but they are mistaken.
Came to a crossroad in my life. I had to choose between Chinese fried chicken and Filipino fried chicken. But then I realized I didn't need to choose and I could have both. So I did. As you can see the Chinese chicken came with a butter fried rice and the Filipino chicken came with mashed taters and gravy. The Filipino chicken had a spice I could not identify. It was good and had the most flavorful skin. The Chinese chicken had a hard crusty skin that was fun to eat but not as much flavor. In the end I think I liked the Chinese chicken more but I preferred the Filipino tater chicken combo overall and would choose that again.
What makes Chinese or Filipino fried chicken different from regular fried chicken? It looks identical. Is the taste significantly different?
The Filipino chicken has 5 spice or ngohiong powder in it and probably some MSG. The skin on the Chinese chicken has the consistency of thin peanut brittle. You can pull it off and munch on it like a chip. Probably has MSG as well.
The mashed potatoes can't really be a Filipino original...more like they're throwing in some KFC for the Americanos.
It's Jollibee which caters to Filipino and Filipino-American families taste. I also tried their purple yam cooler and it was awesome. I wanted to try the spaghetti too but it was too much food. http://www.jollibeeusa.com/about_us.html
I will have to try this Jollibee, mainly because your pictures are better than their website. Curious how this compares to KFC. The KFC Nashville Hot is the gold standard for fast food chicken, imo. Do yourself a favor and try BonChon if you ever get the chance. I shit all over it in this thread the first time, but I've come to consider it the definitive fried chicken. The problem with them is, it looks fast casual, but takes 30-45 minutes to get your order.
I'm going to California next week and my co-worker and I always hit the El Pollo Loco. It's like a Mexican KFC. They marinate their chicken in pineapple and lime juice then grill it. Someone once told me it was the inspiration for the Los Pollos Hermanos chain in Breaking Bad but I'm not so sure.
My co-worker likes chain restaurants. I like trying new stuff. We compromise and El Pollo Loco is sort of new to me so it works.
The whole chain restaurants thing is largely a myth. In my extensive eating endeavors, I've found chains beat stand-alone more often then not. I've had better steaks at Flemings and Mortons that would shame Peter Luger. Our food club has discussed this phenomenon... we though buying in large scale may play a part. Maybe they get better portions or first pickings.
For me it's about the adventure. I've gone out of my way to hit places like Shake Shack and In-N-Out because they are popular and I can't find them where I live. I also can't get any Korean food in my town so I'll grab that when I can. Unfortunately Asian food is probably the scariest food to the unadventurous so I got to hit those places on my own. My usual plan of attack when I travel is to try any of the top ten restaurants listed on yelp.
I'm the same way. I rarely go to the same restaurant twice. Going with a group is fun, because you can try a large chunk of the menu in one shot.