Po Chicken is a casual Korean Restaurant in Mesa Arizona that specializes in Korean Porridge and Korean Fried Chicken. They also serve other Korean Dishes and Beer. This isn’t a fancy place and the atmosphere is a mix of new and worn.
I noticed something odd and saw something I’ve never seen in a restaurant before.
Each table had it’s own call button to ring a server.
We ordered and soon a few plates of side dishes arrive that are referred to as banchan.
The pickles were very unusual tasting to me…..sort of like regular pickles but mixed with Asian Flavors. We received crunchy salad with sweet thousand Island type dressing, fish cakes, kimchi, pickled radish, pickles, miso soup and a condiment for our hot pot.
We shared the Hot Pot with Flying Fish Roe.
We were told that this dish was meatless except for the fish roe. This was a rice dish with nori, shrimp, fine chopped vegetables, onions and fish roe. We mixed the condiment into the dish. It’s a mild but tasty dish. I like the texture of the onions. They are cooked but sort of crispy in a different way.
We also shared a split order of Korean Fried Chicken. We picked Sweet and Spicy and Soy Garlic. They serve a very large portion that might be enough to share between four people.
On the left is the Yang Nyum (the Sweet and Spicy). The Chicken is hot and very juicy……The sauce runs very sweet for my taste and I am a big fan of sweets but this is too sweet for me with very little heat. It’s like eating a warmed up jar of duck sauce. But the chicken on the left would be good if I liked the sauce. It would be my luck that I hit this restaurant when the “B” crew was on because the Ganjang (Soy Garlic) Chicken on the right was almost cold and was very dry……………..very VERY dry…stringy dry and almost cold…..If this chicken could talk what would it tell me?………Clearly this chicken wasn’t fresh made for us…..it was cooked…..chilled….possibly re-heated again for a long time so it could get all dried out (and awful)…and possibly chilled again……and slightly reheated to below a safe serving temperature for us… I tried to eat one piece and the piece I tried was a back bone that hardly had any meat and should have been saved for a stew …….but hey it did have an ultra crispy skin! We had a great deal of leftover chicken that we didn’t box up.
If you need service or the check you have to walk to the front desk or hit the button on the wall.
Every thing is subject to change and your experience may or may not differ.
That was my trip to Po Chicken in Mesa.
www.Po-Chicken.Business.site
