Hiro-Iro: {FOOD} SMOPER CHICKEN

According to its company profile in JobStreet.com, Smoper Chicken was founded in Korea in 1989 and has rapidly grown to be one of the most popular Korean restaurant chains, having over 800 locations across the country. So basically, it’s Korean fast food fried chicken.

Its first branch here in the Philippines happened to open right across our office building. At first, I tried the food out of curiosity and to my surprise, I found the fried chicken as something new to the taste. Much different from McDonald’s, KFC’s and Max’s. The sauce – either of the three, original (sweet and spicy), spicy or soy-garlic, is directly glazed on the chicken. Since it’s opening, I must say that I had frequented the place for lunch and/or dinner. I thought, if I’m gonna eat McDonald’s I might just instead eat Smoper… XD It is much like Bon Chon, another Korean fried chicken restaurant, except that I haven’t tried Bon Chon yet so I don’t have any points of comparison. But I put my bet on Smoper. Why? Continue reading until the end.

I tried to check what makes this Korean fired chicken different from the usual and I discovered that Korean fried chicken is actually fried twice so the result is different from American fried chicken, Smoper fried chicken skin being crunchier and less greasy.

As a matter of fact, I ate there this lunch before I wrote this post and when the cashier asked me if there are any other I’d like to order aside from chicken meal, I suggested that vinegar should be readily available upon request because that’s how Pinoys eat chicken skin to begin with. I so wanted to order chicken skin or chicken pop corn but since there’s no vinegar, I didn’t... =D By the way, their chicken skin is really tasty. The sauce that accompanies it is a bit too fancy (LOL) though the choice of sauce is really nice.

SO! You must be wondering by now what is so Japanice in this blog post?? As it seemed too Koreanice~ Well, here it is.

One lunch time, I was at the counter placing my order and the Korean lady owner approached me..

Her: “Thank you for coming again! Weren't you here the other day?”

Me: “Yes, I was.”

Her: “I remember you because I thought you're Japanese…”

Me: *tears of joy*

O-HA?! XDD

P.S.

The other day, I came over for lunch with a friend who I wanted to get to try Smoper and the lady owner gave us coffee jelly (not in the even in the menu) for dessert on the house~

Smoper Forever?

=DD