Growing up, chef David Kuo and his brothers played video games in a converted garage in the family’s backyard in West Covina, California. Just outside, luffa gourds, garlic greens, potato leaves and other beloved crops grew in Taiwan in his grandmother’s vegetable garden.
Yet Mr. Kuo’s father often came home late from work with a bucket of Church’s fried chicken, and they dug in while wrestling with pixel figures on screen.
The bony pieces were different from the styles of fried chicken that Mr. Kuo came across street vendor stalls during family visits to Taiwan: yan su ji, deboned popcorn chicken sprinkled with fried basil leaves, and da ji pai, butterfly-deboned breast chops. Marinated in soy sauce, rice wine, often garlic and always five-spice powder, then covered with coarse potato starch, fried and finished with a sprinkle of white pepper, Taiwanese fried chicken is typically served in paper bags, without any sauce, for easy snacking along the way.
By mnr. Kuo’s Los Angeles restaurant, Little Fatty, feels the poultry on the menu is familiar, yet distinctive. In a wink to his Taiwanese roots, his American childhood and his fine-dining background, Mr. Kuo small pieces of popcorn quail covered with fried basil, with spicy mayo to dip.
“It obviously symbolizes Taiwanese cuisine, but for me it brings back memories,” he said. “Eating something with legs in front of the TV was the biggest fun.”
Interest in Taiwanese cuisine is growing in the United States, with cookbooks describing the cuisine that spreads the horizon and new shops and pop-ups that open left and right. A cultural tent pole, Taiwanese fried chicken finds a larger audience of eaters and sells out at restaurants in the process. The crisp, aromatic chicken, often found in popcorn-style popcorn stores in the United States, finds its foothold in the American culinary landscape amid a fried chicken zeal: Fast food chains fight for the title of best crispy chicken sandwich. Korean fried chicken chains dot university campuses. Indian fried chicken sandwiches attract crowds and inspire lively reviews in New York City.
Mr. Kuo is one of a generation of Taiwanese American chefs who form this night market recommendation to suit their own education and taste. They dip Taiwanese fried chicken in sandwiches and steamed buns, serve it on top of sliced white bread with pickles and soak it with sauces in recognition of local American specialties and their life experiences.
At Java Saga in Atlanta, Alvin Sun serves four different Taiwanese fried chicken sandwiches, the most popular of which is the ABC: Southern-style coleslaw, sweet pickles, jalapeño-American cheese and habanero-mango sauce on top of which he has his Taiwan No. 1 fried chicken cutlet. Customers love it, whether they have an idea of what Taiwanese fried chicken should be or not.
“As long as they’re interested in trying it, they seem to like it,” he said. Sun said.
When he opened his restaurant in 2020, Mr. Sun obsessed with Nashville hot chicken, by stabbing varieties of chains like Hattie B’s and Gus’s and watching videos on how to prepare it. Inspired by the regional specialty, Java Saga also serves a version of the no. 1 cutlet smeared in a cayenne-based “lava” sauce on top of a slice of brown sugar milk toast and sweet pickles.
“It’s not something you can get in Taiwan,” he said, “and some of our customers say ‘Taiwan does not have it – but it’s really good.’
For purists, he still offers simple dark meat nuggets and a breast chop, in the styles of yan su ji and da ji pai.
Java Saga’s chicken recipe is well traveled and carefully preserved: Mr. Sun adapted it from the one his mother and kitchen assistant, Amy Lee, used to prepare hundreds of pounds of yan su ji for Atlanta’s Lunar New Year festival when he was in high school. She, in turn, adapted the recipe from a friend who owned a fried chicken business in Taichung, Taiwan.
It may be tempting to conclude that Taiwanese fried chicken evolved from Japanese fried chicken styles such as karaage and katsu, given Japan’s colonization of Taiwan from 1895 to 1945. But Taiwanese fried chicken’s history is quite contemporary, says Katy Hui- won Hung, a co-author of “A Culinary History of Taipei.”
Yan su ji dates back to the night markets of the 1970s, about the time the Taiwanese chain TKK Fried Chicken, modeled after Southern-style chicken hooks, was founded. As fried chicken’s prominence in the country’s urban eatery grew in the 1980s, American chains like KFC spread across Taiwan. Da ji pai only became a popular street food in the 1990s.
“Spaghetti, fried chicken and pizza were the kind of things young Taiwanese people go out for, like a treat,” she said. Hung said.
Traditionally, Taiwanese fried chicken is not dipped in a wet batter, and according to some Taiwanese American chefs, it is not Taiwanese fried chicken if it is not lightly covered with potato starch, which creates an irresistible crunchy crust. And the hallmark of the popcorn chicken style is those deep jade crystalline shards of roasted basil that adorn the bite-sized pieces.
Many of today’s Taiwanese American chefs are eager to individualize their yan su ji and dai ji pan while evoking nostalgia for the classics. Eric Sze, the chef and owner of 886 and WenWen in New York, does this in a number of ways.
There’s the popcorn chicken soaked in a hot honey glaze at both restaurants, and the Notorious TFC sandwich at 886: a da ji pai-style breast on a toasted sesame seed sandwich (inspired by the 2000 debut of a fried chicken sandwich at ‘ a Taipei McDonald’s) with pickled daikon and carrot (a highlight for a vegetable spice at the Vietnamese restaurant Madame Vo, in the East Village of Manhattan), and a homemade seaweed sauce (a tomato spice served with oyster omelettes in Taiwan word).
And then there’s the BDSM (pickled, deboned, soy milk) fried chicken at WenWen, which opened in Brooklyn’s Greenpoint neighborhood in March. The elaborate dashboard defies convention: It is a very young hen with its feet intact, dredged in an airy, wet batter of whipped silk tofu, soy milk and sweet potato starch that forms a crisp, light crust. The deep-fried bird is cut into crispy strips for easy eating.
Mr. Sze says living in New York provided him with endless inspiration to reimagine classical music.
“To see the limitlessness of cooking and just steal kind of apology from other cultures – that’s what is being done around the world,” he said. Sze said.
If someone at his restaurants complains about the interpretation, it could be because they can not get enough of it. The dish always sells out before 18:00
Other chefs talk about Taiwanese fried chicken while including influences from across the island and the United States. Before his grandfather died in 2009, Erik Bruner-Yang spent a lot of time in Taiwan visiting him and then decided he was going to become a chef.
“I’m in my early 20s and I realize, I’m half Asian and a military brat, and I had this weird self-crisis,” he said. Bruner-Yang said. “What part of my culture is important to me? I started using cooking as a way to find out. ”
At Maketo, his restaurant and cafe in Washington, DC, Mr. Bruner-Yang reflects his background and his wife’s Cambodian heritage throughout the menu. Fish sauce is added to the five-spice-infused mala caramel that generously covers a large piece of fried, butterfly chicken breast. The dish is served with toasted points of white bread in honor of the restaurant’s former neighbor, the respected fish braai Horace & Dickie’s.
“Initially, the dish was called Taiwanese fried chicken,” he said. Bruner-Yang said. “Now it’s just called Maketto fried chicken.”
This moment is especially significant for chefs like Katie Liu-Sung, who has been cooking professionally since she was 16 years old. Her first job was at a Church’s Chicken in Taichung, Taiwan, where she lived after spending her early childhood in Southern California. The Texas-born fried chicken chain had locations across Taiwan in the 1980s and ’90s, and she worked with a few of them over the years, following their formulas for frying chicken and baking cookies.
Ms. Liu-Sung is now the chef and owner of Chewology, a Taiwanese restaurant in Kansas City, Mo., that serves a classic version of popcorn chicken, as well as a steamed sandwich with Taiwanese fried chicken, cucumber pickles and chili mayo.
“There’s no limit to what we can put on the menu, and it’s becoming a very inspiring thing,” she said. Liu-Sung said. “If people really accept it here, I think it’s really beautiful.”
One night this year, a woman walked into the restaurant and started tearing up. The smell of freshly fried Taiwanese fried chicken that permeated the room made her emotional, she told me. Liu-Sung said.
“Because it reminded her of home.”
Recipe: Taiwanese Popcorn Chicken With Roasted Basil
And to drink …
Few things go better with fried chicken than champagne or a sparkling facsimile. This even applies to this dish, flavored with five-spice powder and soy. The braai replaces the seasoning. See for yourself. Or try a good cava or cremant. Not in the mood for sparkling wine? Riesling will be beautiful, whether dry or a moderately sweet example such as a cabinet or spätlese from Germany. Other white wines like chenin blanc or sauvignon blanc will be delicious, just like Chablis or a Mâconnais white. A dry rose will work well. If you prefer a red, look for something fresh, with little tannins and little oak influence. It could be Beaujolais, or maybe a new-wave garnacha from Spain or a wine from the Cahors vanguard. ERIC ASIMOV