You might have noticed in the picture from yesterday that the pizza place also sold fried chicken. This is because Taiwanese LOVE fried chicken. You think you may know people who like fried chicken, but trust me they have nothing on the Taiwanese. It's like an addiction here, and I have seen people get a bit antsy if they haven't gotten their fried chicken fix in a few days.
The love of fried chicken is so prevalent that every fast food restaurant in the country sells fried chicken. Mcdonald's, pizza hut, you name it, it sells fried chicken. Taiwanese restaurants also sell fried chicken and it's one of the staples of the Taiwanese lunch box. You can either get a chicken "leg" which is drumstick and the thigh together, or the chicken "steak."
The chicken steak is a thing unto itself in Taiwan. It's as if somebody took a hammer to a chicken breast and flattened it out, then deep fried it. because of how flat it is, with each bite you are basically tasting 80% deep fried breading and 20% chicken. It also has a little bit of a sweet taste to it.
Many night markets also have stands which just sell fried chicken steak, each with it's own way of preparing it, to try and find that unique taste that sets it apart. That unique taste is usually trying to figure out how to get it to be 100% fried breading and no chicken at all. It doesn't help that each one is coated with MSG before it is handed to you. In the rare occasions i get it, I always ask for no MSG and while they hear me and say ok, more often than not they put it on out of habit. The idea of not having MSG is not really considered here.
Oh getting back to KFC in particular, one interesting thing is that about five years ago they stopped selling biscuits. It's fun to see what items from america don't make it here cause they don't fit with Taiwanese tastes, and what items get added so they do conform to the Taiwanese market. Something that always gets added to the menus of western fast food places? Corn soup.
The above picture is of a KFC which is right next to a school I used to work at. A fellow teacher (i'll let you guess his name) would go to this KFC for dinner EVERY day. I honestly couldn't tell you why. You might say it's cause it's quick and easy, but because fried chicken is so popular here, there was always a huge line so it would take him forever to get his food. You might say cause as a foreigner it can be hard to know how to get food at other places, but our school was in a night market so you just had to point at food, and there were some pretty good lunch box places nearby too which are pretty simple to get food from.
Or perhaps he was just a genius. Hearing he went there everyday, you must be picturing him as a large monster, but in fact he was super thin and a bit muscular. Added surprise is that he was also in his late 40s. He went to the gym everyday to work out, so perhaps his daily dose of chicken is what gave him the protein he needed to stay in shape. And the fried skin gave his arteries the greasy coating they needed so his blood could easily slide through them. Might not seem logical, but eating at KFC everyday and not having a heart attack also doesn't seem logical.
