| Value | |
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| Crunch | |
| Taste |
On a trip to Fremantle, we stopped at the Pick Rice sushi train restaurant, located a short distance from the Cinema for some lunch time sushi and to try their fried chicken plates.
We ordered the Chicken Karaage ($6.8), Hot Wings ($4.8) and Chicken Nanban ($6.8) all of which could be eaten by one person. This is not good value for money as the portion sizes were far too small for the quality of the food.
The Karaage is quite obviously fried from a packet which was a huge letdown, but it did come with a good amount of mayonnaise and served on a small bed of cabbage.
The Hot-wings looked remarkably good, saturated with hard brown sauce and with a sprinkling of sesame seeds.
But the Chicken Nanban was a hot mess. Chicken Nanban is a dish which traditionally consists of fried chicken with Tartar sauce, and I can confidently say that the diced fried chicken plastered with mayonnaise, BBQ sauce and sesame seeds was not it.
Of the chicken dishes, only the Chicken Karaage had a slight crunch, but it was mostly non existent.
The Chicken Karaage was the most tasty of the three plates, it was juicy and flavoursome. The battered pieces of chicken used were all dark meat, and succulent. The addition of a good amount of mayonnaise with the plate certainly helped!
The Hot-Wings were only slightly warm and super salty. The sauce appears to be made from a combination of soy-sauce and chilli. It was not an appetising combination.
The Chicken Nanban tasted like fish. We honestly had to open up one of the slightly larger bits of chicken to assure ourselves that a mistake hadn’t been made! This dish was not tasty in the slightest, and we had to assume that the oil in the deep fryer had not been changed in a while, so the batter had absorbed flavors from some of the other fish items on the menu.
About five years ago, I used to visit this restaurant once a week to try its chicken Karaage and I was very excited about revisiting and trying it again.
I won’t be going back.