Hot Star Large Fried Chicken

I went there expecting a feed. I got a piece of chicken as big as my head but I also got a surprise I didn’t expect. The «original» chicken is like a massive flattened piece of chicken but at one end you will find bones, lots of bones — so don’t got haphazard til the end.
The deep fried mushrooms are better than I expected, not the best I’ve had, but good for $ 4. I recommend them as your side if you go for the reasonably cheap chicken, side and drink combo. Which brings me to cost, they are very reasonably priced compared to other food outlets in the city.
Overall, I recommend you go there once — it was a nice change from asian/​burgers/​traditional fast foods.

If you love food that is abnormally large, requiring two hands to hold it, then you’ll love Hot Star Chicken. Taiwanese XXL chicken, especially a Hot Star branded one, is my favourite street snack and a must every time I visit Taiwan. Starting as a small counter at Shilin Night Market, the Hot Star franchise has now made its way to Hong Kong, Malaysia, Singapore, and more recently Australia. In Taiwan, every second person walking through the night market will be holding one (or two) of these!
Unlike the «somewhat dirty» night market stores in Taiwan, this newly opened Perth outlet has a permanent store with much flashier fit out. The flashiness does come with a heftier price tag at $ 8.90 each. That’s four times more than its Taiwanese equivalent!
We went to Hot Star with the intention sharing one chicken chop between the three of us. But as usual, our eyes were bigger than our stomachs and we ended up ordering one each. All with extra spicy seasoning!
Verdict? Crunchy, freshly fried and tasty batter but the chicken fillet itself lacked in flavour. If you eat the batter and the chicken together then its nice. But if the batter falls off and you just have a bit of the chicken on its own then you’ll find it really bland. The ones in Taiwan are generously coasted in five-​spice powder and have a strong peppery taste to it. The chicken is however cooked perfectly and is very juicy. Hopefully they can improve the marinade of the chicken fillet because I really enjoyed how crunchy and fresh the batter was!
Word of warning: The spicy seasoning can get quite spicy! It was just right for me but poor Wincen had a really hard time haha!
Random fun fact: According to a Taipei Times’ report of 2011, Taiwanese devour more than 250,000 fried chicken cutlets a day. That’s a crap load of chicken!

Went here for something quick & tasty we could eat on the go & it gave us exactly that! Chicken was juicy, coating was flavoursome & crunchy — basically just delivered. The only thing I’d say is that the poster is a little deceptive. As my first experience with this chain, I thought the ‘bone’ was just a tiny piece like the pic showed, but it’s actually more of like a ribcage sort of bone structure.
All in all, would definitely recommend (:

Having tried the original hot star fried chicken in Taipei, I must say this shop is quite a disappointment. The first time I went there, everything was chaotic. It took them 20 minutes to fry up my order because nobody knew what they were doing. I asked for a medium spicy chicken, and as you can see on my picture, they’ve literally coated my chicken in chilli powder. The fried mushrooms weren’t very nice either, being coated with a starchy paste, the supposedly crispy outside tends to stick together and you end up with mushrooms by themselves and chunks of coating.
I went back to this place today, about two months after my first experience, and the chicken tastes slightly better. They were crunchy on the outside and juicy on the inside. But the actual taste was still rather mediocre.

Typical Taiwanese street food. This chain store is popular among tourists in Taiwan, but not that popular among locals. It still has its unique Taiwanese taste which is good if you crave for Taiwanese food.
台灣的豪大味道本來就普普，所以也可以算是忠於原味。很想吃雞排的時候還是可以解解饞。