{"id":5032,"date":"2011-07-11T00:45:40","date_gmt":"2011-07-11T10:45:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.studionewmedia.com\/blog\/?p=5032"},"modified":"2011-07-11T00:45:40","modified_gmt":"2011-07-11T10:45:40","slug":"jollibee-chicken-joy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/studionewmedia.com\/blog\/index.php\/2011\/07\/11\/jollibee-chicken-joy\/","title":{"rendered":"Jollibee Chicken Joy"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>\"\"<\/a>I was out in Waipahu at lunchtime the other day, so I stopped by Jollibee to give them a try. Although this is the first USA franchise of a restaurant chain from the Philippines, you won\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t find Filipino ethnic fare here: This is a Western-style fast-food place. The three major menu items they have are fried chicken, burgers, and spaghetti. This time around, I opted for the fried chicken, referred to here as \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Chicken Joy\u00e2\u20ac\u009d. The base plate is two pieces of chicken and one side, and from there you can upgrade to two sides, then three pieces of chicken. I got the two-piece with two sides, (#2) with mashed potatoes and buttered corn. The other options were white rice and something else I can\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t remember right now. I neglected to indicate the spicy chicken option when I ordered, so I received the standard fried chicken. The service was very fast and the food was plated neatly. In addition to the gravy on the mashed potatoes, there was a little container of extra gravy for the chicken. Including the fountain drink, my meal came to $7.33 USD with sales tax.<\/p>\n

The mashed potatoes were fine, but the gravy initially seemed overly salty. There were some small purple flecks in the potatoes, but I didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t check to see whether they were purple potato skin bits, red onion pieces, or even red cabbage pieces. They added a texture, but no discernable flavor. Mashed potatoes and gravy get a C.<\/p>\n

The corn was also fine, but nothing to write home about. It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s third party corn swimming in melted butter. It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s pretty hard to screw up, but also pretty hard to make exceptional. Corn gets a C.<\/p>\n

The chicken was very good. The skin was perfectly crispy, and the meat was juicy and not dried out. I would venture a guess that they are using the Colonel\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s pressure cooker technique. The flavor was well balanced. My two pieces were a drumstick and a breast. I usually dislike drumsticks, but this one was surprisingly good \u00e2\u20ac\u201c no stanky dark meat nor weird gelatinous sinews. I give the chicken a B+ for flavor. My only negative reaction to the chicken was that it was tiny. The drumstick was like double the volume of the average chicken wing, and the breast was like Cornish game hen small. If anyone remembers when Zippy\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s changed chicken vendors for a month late last year, it was like that tiny. If I had to rank it amongst the other purveyors of fried chicken, for flavor, I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d place it with KFC at the top, a little above Zippy\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s, and well above Byron\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s. It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s probably about the best I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve experienced with regard to chicken quality (no globs of yellow fat hiding under the skin like Zippy\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s) and cooking preparation. How they get the skin to that level of crispiness without the meat going dry is amazing. Both Zippy\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s and Byron\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s usually take the skin past GBD to \u00e2\u20ac\u0153fully browned and on the verge of going black\u00e2\u20ac\u009d, resulting in meat that is on the drier side.<\/p>\n

Overall, it was a good meal, but a little light, especially considering the payout. Compared to other places, you\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re getting two pieces of chicken for the same money that would bring you three significantly larger pieces elsewhere. The amount of food was probably more in line with what I should be eating, rather than a \u00e2\u20ac\u0153fat American size\u00e2\u20ac\u009d meal, but it would have been nice if it was priced more in line with what KFC would charge for a two-piece chicken meal, which is in the $5-6 USD range.<\/p>\n

Recommended<\/p>\n

$7.33 USD<\/p>\n

Three out of four chicken munching monkeys<\/p>\n

Next time I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ll try the spaghetti\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6<\/p>\n

BTW, the mascot is creepy.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I was out in Waipahu at lunchtime the other day, so I stopped by Jollibee to give them a try. Although this is the first USA franchise of a restaurant chain from the Philippines, you won\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t find Filipino ethnic fare here: This is a Western-style fast-food place. The three major menu items they have are […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true},"categories":[7,8,13],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/paJYlx-1ja","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/studionewmedia.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5032"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/studionewmedia.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/studionewmedia.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/studionewmedia.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/studionewmedia.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5032"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/studionewmedia.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5032\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/studionewmedia.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5032"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/studionewmedia.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5032"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/studionewmedia.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5032"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}