Quick, where can you get the best fried chicken? Did you guess Popeyes? KFC maybe? Raising Canes is always a safe bet right? If you guessed any of those three you’d be wrong because the answer is P.F. Changs. The asian bistro recently dropped what it’s calling the Golden Feast, a special limited-time dish inspired by the South Korean tradition of eating fried chicken and drinking bubbly with your nearest and dearest at first snowfall.
It’s a tradition that we petition we fully adopt. But instead of doing it during the first snowfall, let’s do it every change of the season. Or… every week.
Look our point is we love fried chicken, and we want more of it, especially when it’s this good. But, we’re getting ahead of ourselves, what exactly is the Golden Feast? It’s a bit flexible, but essentially it is a subsection of the P.F. Changs menu that consists of bone-in or boneless Korean-style fried chicken in single and shareable portions, a small menu of optional pairing beverages including champagne, prosecco, or beer, as well as Taiwanese Popcorn Chicken.
We’re going to be focusing this review on what I think is the best part of this menu (the bone-in fried chicken) but let me give you a brief review of the Taiwanese Popcorn Chicken. The dish consists of juicy, tender, dark meat chicken battered, fried, and tossed in a dry-rub five-spice seasoning along with some sweet and fruity guajillo chiles — which provide a nice kiss of mild heat on the backend — and some fragrant basil. It’s a very tasty dish, with a lot of nuance and depth, but it doesn’t taste quite as essential as the fried chicken.
Now let’s talk about the star of the show!
P.F. Changs Korean Fried Chicken
The Korean Fried Chicken is available in two form factors: bone-in and boneless, and both have their strong points. The Boneless is ultimately more shareable as it’s available in four, five, eight, and 10-piece iterations, and you get the benefit of not having to deal with bones. That’s appealing, but we’re going to suggest you go the bone-in route.
Yes, dealing with bones is a hassle, and it’s a bit less shareable since it’s only available as a three or six-piece, but I found the bone-in to be juicier, and ultimately more satisfying than the boneless, which came across a bit more like an appetizer than a main dish.
In addition to the form factor, you also need to decide between getting your chicken coated in a dry rub or sweet and spicy Korean sauce. The sauce is good; it’s earthy, sweet, and savory with a mild heat that builds between bites. As far as I can tell it is a very tame Gochujang, but where this dish shines is with its four side sauces, which only really get a chance to shine on the dry rub version of the chicken.
The dry rub features five-spice seasoning and some granulated sugar, offering a fragrant, complex, and nuanced flavor with notes of fennel, cinnamon, and clove. It’s already so damn flavorful that you might be tempted to skip the four sauces. Don’t do this, because each of the four sauces brings a lot of flavor to the dish.
The four sauces include a Sweet Soy Glaze, a kewpie mayo assisted Dynamite sauce, Hot Honey, and Chili crisp. My advice is to put a dab of each sauce on your plate and run your chicken through it so you can enjoy all of them, but here is a brief overview of each sauce.
The Sweet Soy Glaze is a slightly thicker version of soy sauce that leans sweeter rather than salty. Imagine a simplified version of teriyaki sauce without the mirin and sake, and you’ll be in the ballpark flavorwise. If you’ve ever had Korean chicken wings, they were likely tossed in a similar sauce.
The Dynamite is hot, smokey, and savory. I’m tasting kewpie mayo, and some type of smoked chile. I like heat, but this was my least favorite sauce as I felt it muddied the nuance of the rub.
Hot Honey is floral, tangy, and sweet, but has a gentle heat on the backend that waters the mouth.
The Chili Crisp is the thickest sauce and has a savory, earthy flavor, with a more pronounced heat on the backend than any of the other sauces, but I still wouldn’t describe this as spicy per se. Though my palate has a strong heat tolerance, so air on the side of caution if you’re a wimp when it comes to heat.
Sauce aside, the chicken is heavily battered, which adds a nice and satisfying crunch to every bite, and houses some seriously tender chicken that practically falls off the bone as you tear away at it. Because there is a lot of flavor going on, this dish can get a bit overwhelming, which is where the pickled cucumber and red onion garnishes comes in. These simple sides do a lot to refresh the palate, which is why they are a staple side at Korean BBQ spots. They serve the same function here, but had P.F. Changs offered some kimchi, I think it would’ve kicked this dish to an even higher level.
When it comes to the drink pairing, I was skeptical at first but ultimately decided to go the champagne route to follow the dish’s concept, and I was pleasantly surprised. The bubbly crispy quality was a natural pairing for this flavorful dish and served as another palate cleanser that also paired surprisingly well with the pickled cucumber.
The Bottom Line:
P.F. Changs Golden Feast feels like an essential addition to the menu. The flavor of the Korean fried chicken is complex and deep, a true joy to explore and get lost in. It’s also the best tasting fried chicken we had all year, which is saying a lot because chicken is king in the food space right now.
Find your nearest P.F. Changs here.
