THROWDOWN: Chili Chicken Edition
Here comes a new series!
Throwdown will be a blog series where we take one dish from one restaurant and we pit it against the same dish from other restaurants. At the end, we will crown a winner of the throwdown!
The first round is a blind taste test so that we are not biased if we know where that dish is from. We will each get to have one bite of that dish rate it from 1-10. At the end we will come up with an overall score for each restaurant. Then the second round is the eating round where we get to actually eat more than one bite - in a lot of cases, one bite is not enough to get a full sense of that dish. Maybe that one bite has more sauce, or is bigger, or wasn’t cooked as well maybe, but this round will help determine if the dish is consistent overall. We will then rank the restaurants and compare that with the first round to get the winner!
As usual, I would love to hear your thoughts and comments if you have any suggestions to make the process better!
CHILI CHICKEN EDITION
Disclaimer: I know that there are a LOT of Hakka places around. We’ve only chosen 4 places that we frequently order from! If you have other Hakka restaurants that are your go-tos, comment below!! I would love to hear where you get your chili chicken cravings satisfied.
What is chili chicken?
From my research on the internet on how to describe this dish, it is an Indian Chinese dish consisting of crispy chicken chunks that are tossed in a spicy chili sauce. It can be served dry or with a gravy sauce (which I prefer!).
So here are the breakdown of our four contenders:
Chilli Chicken House
Ming Room
Hakka Legend
Hakka No. 1 (Keele & Lawrence Location)
Three of them are Mississauga restaurants and one of them is in North York. Why the North York restaurant? It was the first place we were introduced to chilli chicken! This restaurant is close to where my parents used to work and we just loved their chili chicken. Now we actually haven’t had it in years and we wanted to see if it is still as good as we remembered!
ROUND #1: THE BLIND TASTE TEST
So we all did a blind taste test of all the chili chicken dishes, in random order for each person tasting.
After the first round, the rankings are as follows (a combined total score out of 40):
#1: Hakka #1 (33.5/40)
#2: Hakka Legend (32/40)
#3: Chilli Chicken House (31.5/40)
#4: Ming Room (29.5/40)
If you want to see some of the comments for each one, I’ve included our chart below!
ROUND #2: THE EATING TEST
We want to taste the consistency of each dish, with more than just one bite. So we tasted all of the dishes again and ate it with rice (of course!).
Now we were not in consensus with this ranking. I’m still trying to figure out the best way to rank this round, so if you have ideas give me a shout! However, everyone had different opinions.
What we concluded on though is the #1 and number #2 spot: Hakka No. 1 and Hakka Legend. We all said that they were both really good and each bite was consistent all the way through.
Now, a lot of you are probably now like WHAT!
Especially for those of you who are frequent Chilli Chicken House (CCH) goers. Here’s the thing, CCH’s chili chicken was NOT BAD AT ALL. I myself was a frequent eater there and honestly, when you’re eating it hot and fresh, it’s really good! The consistent comments though during our taste test for CCH is that the breading on the chicken is quite thick and bready. And have you ever eaten chicken and it taste super chicken-y? That’s what some of the chicken pieces tasted like. But, I do like the sauce/gravy.
However, this gravy would not pass a left over test. If you’re eating this the next day, the gravy is quite thick and coagulated even after you warm it up sometimes.
Here’s another plus for CCH. I know we are talking strictly chili chicken for this taste test, but their other dishes are delicious and tops all the other places. For example, their Hakka Chow Mein easily tops all the other restaurants’ hakka noodles by ten folds.
Now if you are into spicy chili chicken, you should go for the Ming Room option. Out of the four, this is the spiciest one by far. Again, while it’s on the bottom of our current list, it’s not a bad chili chicken dish at all. In fact, I actually get chili chicken from here quite often! We just felt that compared to the others, it fell to the bottom of the list. If you do come here, ask for extra gravy! Our dish came with a lack of sauce and I do love my chili chicken gravy.
Now what makes Hakka No. 1 our top rated chili chicken? We just felt that the overall dish was great. The gravy, the chicken, the flavour, consistency was great all around. Now while we do really like this chili chicken, here is the downside: 1) this place is kind of far. It’s located in North York and honestly, I would not be down to drive all the way there to get chili chicken frequently. Maybe if I was in the area I would, but with traffic and such, not sure it’s worth it. 2) Their other dishes that we’ve tried are quite lacking compared to say CCH. Like by quite a lot. So again, is it worth it to drive all the way to North York JUST for chili chicken? I’ll let you answer that question.
If you’re not down to drive to North York, I’d say try Hakka Legend. It came as a close second - the taste was good and they give you a lot of sauce (which I love). Also this place passes the leftover taste test! The chicken and the sauce are still delicious the next day.
Now, I know I know. Taste is super subjective and you may not at all agree with our rankings. However, we’re just giving you a look at the different options that you can try and showing you how we would rank it after tasting all of them side by side. If you haven’t tried some of these restaurants, I would encourage you to do so and tell me what you think!
Until next time!