Restaurant: Taiwan Cuisine
City: Fremont, California

I had dinner with the relatives off of Cushing Parkway. It’s located in a business/industrial area, so I would assume the restaurants here get crazy during lunch hours! During dinner, it’s relatively quiet.

Taiwan Cuisine specializes in Taiwanese food that are considered as street food in Taiwan. One of the dishes we had was the popcorn chicken (鹹酥雞). I’m not talking about the KFC Popcorn Chicken. In fact, I’ve never had that. I’m talking about the Taiwanese popcorn chicken! It’s typically found in boba shops here.

My sister and I frequent boba shops, but not my parents, aunts, and uncles. It could be a generation thing.

Here’s a close-up of the popcorn chicken!

I find Taiwan Cusine’s popcorn chicken has the perfect crispiness. It’s not overly fried to the point where the chicken is slightly overcooked. The chicken is also slimmer than those I usually get at boba shops, so perhaps it also cuts the deep-frying time?

Oh, and you can usually request a certain level of spiciness (mild, medium, hot) when you order this. This one was ordered without any spiciness as some of my relatives cannot eat spicy food. Mild is usually good for me; for medium, I’d need to drink lots of water/tea!

And here’s a bit of info on the snack, from Kirbie’s Cravings. A recipe is also posted there!

Taiwanese popcorn chicken, also referred to as Crispy Chicken or Salt and Pepper Chicken, is a popular snack often found at tapioca/boba tea cafes.

The crunchy bite-sized pieces of chicken are dusted with a special mix of seasoning which makes them quite addicting. If you’ve never had them before or you’re a big fan of the snack, I definitely recommend you trying out this recipe.