Some like them fat
and some like them tall
Some like them short
skinny legs and all
I like them boss
I like them proud
And when they walk
you know they draw a crowd
Another Tuesday.... another Taste! This week we're bringing the funk (and no I will not ask anyone to Do the Funky Chicken, despite the title of this review)
After a more American style, buttermilk fried chicken last week with local spot Birdies... this time we're checking out an enormous chicken chain from South Korea (possibly the largest there) that just a few months ago opened its first ever Canadian location here in downtown Toronto. It's BHC Chicken!
The backstory of BHC (which stands for/translates as "Better Happier Choice") was rather hard to find and mostly consists of large food companies eventually being bought out by even larger food companies. It would seem the original concept opened up in Goyang City sometime in the late 1990s (Goyang seems to be Seoul's Hamilton, if you're geographically curious) and quickly grew under various corporate umbrellas, thus why some sources have them being established in 2004 while others say 2013.
Frankly this is all very uninteresting so instead I'm going to talk about The Well for a bit.
The Well! What is this "The Well" might you ask? Well... sit down and I'll tell you. It's quite a bit similar to the Chefs Assembly Hall (where I previously checked out Grandma Loves You), like a more polished and sleek mall food court with public seating, only focused more on hip local restaurants than your grimier fast food chains. Plus, they're licensed. Unlike Chef's Assembly, The Well has a bunch of other retail shops on ground level but this is a food review so who cares about that.
This was my first time really exploring the downstairs section of The Well (it's only been open for a little over a year) where most of the food joints are, and I must say I found it quite charming. To use another comparison, it's a lot like the Food Building at the CNE during the Ex: just so many various cuisine options that half the fun is just wandering around and checking out what each of these stalls are about.
There's a bit more down here than just a sea of intriguing food options. A giant plush Mario for instance (how the heck do you win that thing? Or even get it out of the machine? How did it get in the machine in the first place?). Or, a confusing colour-coded map that looks straight out of a late 90s video game (Doom, anybody?). Something for everyone!
Anyhow, I greatly enjoyed wandering around this place (was even tempted to play the Pac-Man arcade game while I waited for my order) but now lets move on to tackling some Better Healthier Choice chicken.
Back in the first run of the Tuesday reviews I checked out a place called Pelicana Chicken, which like BHC is an enormously popular fried chicken chain in South Korea. Pelicana did not enjoy particular success in Toronto, as their spot at Charles and Yonge has shuttered sometime in the past two-ish years since I reviewed them (a notoriously cursed location strikes again). Unfortunate as I recall quite liking them and the price was extremely affordable.
BHC does things a little differently than Pelicana did, which was more of your straight-forward "bone-in pieces and tenders" type spot. Instead, BHC forgoes those huge bone-in white or dark meat pieces for three options: tenders, wings, or boneless pieces of dark meat chicken. Also appreciated: they don't overwhelm you with a thousand different sauce options. Seriously. There's a chicken wing place just up the street from me I'm curious to try, but then I see eight different sauce categories each with like twenty different options... most with names that reveal absolutely nothing about what they actually taste like! Is this a Pokemon-like "gotta taste em all!" kind of ploy? Nobody is ever going to do that... I'm busy enough trying to sample every pizza ever as it is...
I'm no expert on Korean cuisine (quite the opposite) and my knowledge doesn't extend far beyond "I'm going to mispronounce whatever this is". Thankfully, BHC Toronto is polite enough to help a dum dum like me along and describe what exactly each of their options are.
For their chicken there are really just six choices: Matcho-King (an aged soy-based sauce), Gold-King (soy with honey), the Bburinkle (dry dusted with a cheese seasoning), Sweet and Spicy, a classic dry rub option and then a spicy dry rub. I don't much care for soy sauce and the sweet and spicy didn't sound too interesting... so I went for the Bburinkle ten boneless dark meat pieces. Side-wise, I was curious about their fries but... fried cheese balls are just too unusually tempting to resist.
And here you have it (plus a side of their sweet and spicy sauce because I was curious, just not enough to have my chicken drenched in it).
I'll admit, BHC offers quite a bit more than just fried things and a little nagging voice in the back of my head was saying: "why not go fully authentic and get one of those dishes instead?" You know, like their Tteokbokki, Chagyechi, or really go all out for the Dakbokkeumtang? Again, without looking them up I have no freaking clue what any of those dishes are... but it's giving my spell checker a total panic attack so hey at least I'm amusing myself here.
Besides, BHC is best known as a super popular 'fried chicken spot' in South Korea, so trying that headline item seems the most prudent choice for this review. If I'd gone totally rogue and gotten some rice and a poutine, I'd sort of be missing the point somewhat me thinks.
Cheese balls! These were genuinely unlike anything I've had... really ever. I was thrown off considerably. When checking their menu online beforehand, I was surprised to see these described as one might describe a dessert. Cheese for dessert? In my Western world type of thinking, cheesy things are almost always part of an appetizer, with the exception of cheesecake which I don't think completely counts here.
After now eating these... I totally get it. This is a dessert item. It's because of the exterior: this isn't your crispy/crunchy arancini or mozzarella stick type of crust... it's way more like a firm but crunchy doughnut. They look a lot like Timbits but have more of a solid shell rather than any squish to them.
They're also freaking delicious, and very very heavy. I could only eat one of these at a time before needing a temporary reprieve... it's a condensed fried dairy overload.
There's a sweetness in here that makes it work as a dessert. Not the kind of dessert you wanna eat if you're already full, heck no... but I get it. The fried coating, aside from being light yet crispy, has that kind of sugar you kind on certain kinds of doughnuts. Bringing it back to my CNE food comparisons... these are a lot like Tiny Tom Donuts hollowed out and jammed with soft gooey cheese.
The cheese itself... quite milky, melts extremely well (the texture of these things is obviously crucial) and indeed there's so much of it you're getting a lot of sugary crunch and gooey cheese on every bite (for the love of your heart, take your time on these little artery grenades). Once cold, you lose a lot of that cheese magic when it solidifies (becoming pleasant squishy soft cheese, but it's not the same).
However... pop them in the toaster oven on low heat... you get most of the magic back. These were extremely tasty, although even a small order is best not eaten alone.
Onto the main attraction, the fried chicken.
Initially, upon seeing how small these pieces are, I was worried. Twenty bucks for ten of these? I mean, they're not much larger than chicken nuggets...
Fortunately, the bargain value of these bite-size pieces is offset by... well there being probably more like fourteen or fifteen of these in this box instead of ten. All is forgiven.
Besides, the chicken is really tasty. It's all dark meat so you're getting those fattier bits, but they must trim some of that off before frying because you never get any real bite that's just pure greasy grizzle. You get chicken in every bite and the light breading holds it quite tightly, no pockets of just air.
Speaking of that breading... it's fascinating. The opposite of your heavy North American fried chicken super crunch, hell these are softer and more squeezable than the cheese balls. A very light batter but still crispy layer, with some crunchier parts on the edges... which on it's own as a plain fried flavour would be plenty tasty.
However, the addition of that Bburinkle seasoning... essentially a dusting of a cheese powder and some subtle herbs... really elevates this. Almost like they fresh out of the fryer tossed these babies in Cheetos dust (geez I'm just full of analogies this week)... except imagine a more refined, less bold but more lingering type of cheesy dust. And one that cakes your fingers but doesn't turn them completely Trump orange after two bites.
The chicken inside... tastes like good dark meat chicken, like a good bite out of a tender nicely fried drumstick. The sensation of eating dark meat without thinking of bones in the back of my mind... a sensation I'll never adjust to... but regardless it's juicy without being obnoxiously oily or greasy. BHC has somehow disguised fried dark chicken bits as a somewhat light snack... that's tricky to do.
Oh right, the sweet and spicy side sauce! Quickly... lots of sweet, like a syrupy taste and consistency, though it never becomes too much. A lot like a Thai Chili sauce. I don't get a lot of spice here though. A tingle in the front of the mouth is really all you get, otherwise this is more like a bolder and more peppery sweet and sour type of sauce.
As a dip? Quite enjoyable: there's some lasting flavour and it adds an extra sweet something to the unsauced cheese dusted chicken pieces. Fine as a sauce, but as a spice it's not anything to write across the Pacific pond about... which is probably by design. A very accessible "spicy" option for the masses.
Overall! Yeah I'd go back. I'd like to try some of their spicier chicken options as I think this particular kind of fried chicken (softer and lighter) could be quite interesting with some genuine powerful heat.
The one caveat I will use, however: BHC Chicken is really a place best enjoyed with multiple people. Take it from me, somebody who has ventured out to like hundreds of places now by myself to review things... which sounds awful lonely when described like that... um right! No, BHC's menu is really full of items that truly lend themselves to a sharing experience. A few orders of the chicken in different configurations (spicier wings, soy tenders for instance) and a bunch of sides or the directly Korean dishes for the table to share. BHC Toronto seems to recognize this too, as their location within the Well has plentiful seating within their spot (unlike many of the smaller stalls) and dedicated servers for those tables.
Regardless, my personal experience was a positive one. Terrific chicken, and those cheese balls are still confusing the heck out of me. A fried cheese dessert? Am I Elvis? Some wild stuff. One final thing I will say about those cheese balls... they would pair exceptionally well with some kind of berry jam. There's already the sugar sweetness on the outside of it, but there's so much cheese... a vibrant fruity jam like that I think could cut through that heaviness and be some wonderful stuff.
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Peepers
Somebody made a supercut of one of my favourite sitcoms, re-edited so as to describe every Radiohead album. Extremely funny if you're a big fan of both of these things (which I am):
Tuesday Tune
Give it up for the Godfather himself, the incomparable... JB.
That's all for this week! We will be back next time with another review, possibly maybe even a non-fried chicken one? Or who knows... maybe 2025 is just going to be the year of nothing but fried chicken reviews. That's it, I'm rebranding the weekly reviews as "The Tuesday Tender" or "The Finger Lickin' Taste". Consider that a 'nugget' to chew on...
...okay I'll stop now. Until next time! Stay safe, stay warm out there and most of all... don't spill that mustard.
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