Once you visit a place so much that it practically becomes your third home, you start to exhibit the same behaviours that you would at home like: trying out restaurants, mooching around the house, visiting the fam, and just general chillin’ etc. and so we come to our annual visit to New York. Crazily enough the number of eating places which we have planned into our itinerary has actually outnumbered the amount of sight-seeing we have planned!

For our first meal out in New York we decided to keep it local and stay close to home and family, it is Christmas (kind of) after all!

Korean fried chicken (or the other KFC) is an absolute institution in New York, if not in the United States. Sure I’ve seen and sampled attempts at it in Korean restaurants in London before but I have to say no one does it like they do in New York. Well … maybe in Korea they do it better and hopefully one day I’ll find out! Sadly Bonchon Chicken (the leading KFC franchise) that we’d visited fondly a couple of years ago had closed its Flushing branch but we still had quite a few options to choose from including Mad For Chicken. As are most things asian Mad For Chicken has the cutest little logo .. but you can’t eat a logo so I guess I better get on with it!

We were, as usual, just a wee bit greedy when we were ordering. Who thought it would be a good idea to get Calamari and French fries combo (both topped with parmesan cheese and chef’s seasonings), Seafood Pancake AND our chicken!

The side acts (the calamari, fries and seafood pancake) were nice without being distracting to the main attraction of the gorgeous chicken. I would always advise with the chicken that you go for a half and half – one half being sweet (Soy Garlic Sauce) and one half being blow-your-mind-spicy (Hot & Spicy) unless you really really like your food spicy. Its nice to switch between the two when the heat gets too intense.

I wouldn’t say that the chicken was quite as tasty as I remember the Bonchon chicken being however it still tasted pretty darn good going down. The sweet chicken being just a the right side of sweet and the spicy, oh boy! I sure made good use of the radish they supply with the chicken to cool your mouth! True to the style of decent Korean fried chicken we weren’t left with any of that oily residue after effects that you get from most other fried chicken. What’s the secret I wonder? Mad For Chicken says its because the chicken is twice fried, on another site I read it was something about removing the fat from under the skin so what you get is this delicate thin crispy outer. However its derived I absolutely approve and some form of KFC will definitely be on my to eat list when I return to New York.