Never was I sucked into the Kraze, a term for the Korean craze coined by yours truly. But who can resist succulent crispy fried chicken washed down with ice cold beer? Apparently Fairyland serves the best Korean fried chicken in town. So for our celebration meal* we ventured to Austin Avenue, the new Korean Street, to have some KFC and drink beer before sunset.
* 99% celebrating for Simmy's job and 1% celebrating for the completion of half of my exams. Mid-exam festival, if you will.
There's always a sea of people waiting outside Fairyland or any other KFC establishment**. A 3-hour waiting time is not unheard of. We arrived a little earlier than 4pm on a weekday so there were only two tables of guests. If you ask me whether Fairyland is worth queueing for, I'd say in a booming economy it's hard to find a decent place with no line around meal times. But to me, waiting more than an hour for a table is plain ridiculous. I enjoyed my meal at Fairyland and have plans to return, but I wouldn't be caught dead spending two hours of my life lingering outside a restaurant waiting to be seated.
** In case you haven't got that already, KFC means Korean Fried Chicken because who would want to eat the KFC fast food that we all know. Level with me, what is it with KFC in Hong Kong nowadays? I wouldn't eat it even if it's free.
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| Vegetable Salad ($120) - definitely needed some greens to "de-fire" and thankfully this salad came in a huge salad bowl. The vegetables were fresh but they could have spinned the leaves a bit as the salad was too watery making the dressing tasteless. The heaps of blue cheese sort of saved it though. |
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| Original Fried Chicken / Hot Spicy Chicken ($185?) - chose the boneless version because there was no way I could deal with bones. Not the most succulent chicken I had but it was still good. Btw what's the point of the side potato chips? |
Rating: 3.5/5
Food: I have a pretty "interesting" scale of ranking unhealthy food - is it worth an acne attack? Beef jerky? No. Kettle Chips? Clearly yes. You get the idea. On this peculiarly silly ranking system, Fairyland fried chicken is a "yes". The chicken itself wasn't particularly juicy, but it tasted so good and there was no need to worry about bones. I was happy the chicken-y taste that so often presents in fried chicken was missing. The Original Fried Chicken was well seasoned while the Hot Spicy Chicken was coated with an addictive tangy spicy sauce. Personally I prefer the Original but I think half Original/half flavoured chicken is the order to go for if you don't want your palate to go too dry. As if the heavy sauce was going to soothe the sore throat building at the back of your mouth... Honestly even the Vegetable Salad couldn't do its job. Despite the dangerous consequence, I (recklessly) would love to go back to try their Grill Fried Chicken! Still not queueing for an hour+ though.
Environment: Bright and white like a canteen. It was also like a canteen in the sense that it felt a bit unclean. K-pop was blasting out loud in the shop and I swear Simmy knew 80% of the songs. And I swear I was the only non-K-fan there. Outcast.
Service: The waitress serving us was an ajuma(?) who spoke a bit of Cantonese and English. Friendly and all smiles. Even asked Simmy if she was OK when she appeared slightly tipsy from the beer...
Price: The bill came to $4XX for the chicken, the salad and two pints of draught beer. It may seem too expensive for what it is (it's essentially fast food), but I feel like a satisfied spoilt kid with every meaty boneless bite. KFC Hot Shot Bites, popcorn chicken which is more fried batter than fried chicken, is $8.5 for a box but I bet $10 there's less than 10g of meat in there. Sometimes you pay $300 for a nice fancy plate of pasta but you still feel hungry walking out of the restaurant. At Fairyland, I had a good time and left giggly from beer. What more could I ask for?
Fairyland
G/F, Hong Kong Offshore Center
28 Austin Ave
Tsim Sha Tsui
Hong Kong
Thanks again Simmy for the meal! I wish you the best on your first job and all your future endeavours! X
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