I arrived home recently from work one day and I saw an advertisement posted on my door for a chicken shop that was supposed to be opening. The name of the shop is Chicken Syndrome, and they were advertising a special item to celebrate their full opening. The price was only 10,000 won, and for a box of chicken these days here in South Korea, that’s pretty good!
Now, the name of the shop, and chain, is a bit unusual. One might be forgiven for being a bit afraid when going to a restaurant named Syndrome, but the location looked very safe when I arrived there!
The store looked nice and clean inside, and the kitchen was bustling when I placed the order. The owners were very kind and polite, and said the order would only take a few minutes. I guess that their ad campaign was working, because they had a ton of takeout orders being prepared.
The menu item in question was called Toowoomba Chicken. It is a box of boneless chicken tenders, plus some of what the company class Toowoomba sauce. I can only imagine that the sauce has this name because of a popular Australian-themed franchise here in South Korea (and around the world) that serves a pasta dish with the same name.
Well, it was only 8 minutes for my order to be ready, and I picked up the bag and quickly walked home to enjoy my chicken!
The order came with some honey yangnyum sauce, some Toowoomba sauce, some salt, pickled radishes, and a bottle of coke.
I put the sauces out onto a plate, and prepared to dig into the chicken.
The box was quite full, which was a good thing as I didn’t want to go hungry!
The chicken smelled great, and the pieces also looked quite big.
My first bite was great! The exterior was crispy and hot, and the inside was juicy and tender meat.
The chicken also tasted like the oil was very fresh and clean, and had been drained properly so there was not a lot of oily and greasy residue.
Of course I had to try it with the sauces that the company provided.
The honey yangnyum sauce was quite tasty, but a bit sweet, which I assume had to do with the honey ingredient being added.
It did go well with the chicken, and had a nice thick consistency to it.
The Toowoomba sauce was…interesting. It was a bit runny, and actually tasted like cream soup. It wasn’t a bad flavor, but it did taste very interesting and not at all what I expected.
I don’t think it went very well with the chicken, but for some people it might be lovely.
The salt was of course good, but it was hard to pick up on the chicken because there was a lack of oil on the outside.
I enjoyed my meal from Chicken Syndrome. The chicken was fresh and tasty which is the main thing. The sauces were okay, and I think it really depends on each individual’s taste to decide if they like that sort of sauce.
I will be going back to try some other things from Chicken Syndrome, and I have my eye on their Honey Deri series, which looks like it could be really great!
