Surprise! Jolibee's fried chicken declared America's best

Jolibee's Chickenjoy beats out KFC for best chain fried chicken in the US.

Everytime I pass by my local Jolibee's, there is always a line 5-to10 deep. Now I know why. The best fried chicken in America comes from the Philippines' Jolibee's fast food franchise.

I love fried chicken. I've even driven an hour and a half to Yountvillle, Calif. to eat the higly praised fried chicken of Thomas Keller's Addendum restaurant, which has a large Asian clientele

Eater.com Special Projects Editor Lesley Suter credited Chickenjoy's "subtly seasoned skin" and how the chicken itself was "satisfyingly light, flavorful in a ‘tastes like chicken’ sort of way, and supremely moist.”

The pronouncement from the food and restaurant news site Eater.com came after staff members compared the fried chicken of 14 US and international fast food chain outlets to find the “Best Fast-Food Chain Fried Chicken in America”

“We are honored that our beloved Chickenjoy has been named as among the best fried chicken in the US,” said Jollibee Group’s President for Philippine Brands in North America Maribeth dela Cruz . "At our core, Jollibee is all about serving great-tasting food and bringing the joy of eating to everyone, and we are glad that more and more people around the world are discovering the joy of our crispylicious, juicylicious Chickenjoy.”

Jolibee's Chickenjoy beat out the chicken offerings of world-famous KFC, Popeyes chicken sandwich and McDonalds McNuggets.

As it turns out, after doing a comparison test of the 14 competitors -- including Shake Shack, Wendy's, Wingstop,, and Chick-fil-A, in four categories: bone-in, boneless, sandwich, and saucy, the two finalists came from Asia: Jolibee's Chickenjoy and South Korean-owned Bonchon's half-drumsticks, half wings.

The announcement comes as Jolibee is set to open up its first outlet in Manhattan's Times Square on Aug. 18.

"Opening our Times Square location, an undeniable global destination and retail hot spot, is truly a dream come true for our brand," said Dela Cruz, "It's not only our newest location, but a powerful symbol of how far we've come and the unlimited potential we see for the future.

Next time a fried chicken craving hits me, I'll save me the long drive and some bucks and instead head over to my local mall for some Chickenjoy from Jolibee's.  

EDITOR'S NOTE: For additional commentary, news and views from an AANHPI perspective, follow @DioknoEd on Twitter. 

New York restaurant touted as "clean" Chinese insults entire culture

I just paid a pretty hefty sum for a meal at a highly-touted Chinese restaurant. It was worth every penny. I don't think I had a better prepared Chinese meal anywhere else.

It's an injustice and a tad bit racist that people always expect Chinese food -- all Asian cuisines, in general -- should be cheap food and thus not as good as something you'd get in  a fancy French or Italian restaurant.

We need to acknowledge that preparing a high-quality Chinese meal takes just as much talent, skill and artistry than a meal prepared by a European-trained chef.

So when a white person describes her Chinese restaurant as "clean" and "healthy" she's taking a swipe at an entire culture targeting most of the Chinese restaurants most of us have enjoyed eating at.

New York-based Arielle Haspel told Eater that at Lucky Lee's restaurant she features “clean” Chinese American recipes for “people who love to eat Chinese food and love the benefit that it will actually make them feel good.”

Her Instagram post which has since been deleted says that traditional Chinese lo mein makes you “feel bloated and icky the next day,” according to Next Shark. 

Haspel's comments (now deleted) naturally stirred up the pot in the Twitterverse:

To be clear, I'm not trying to make this issue a case of cultural appropriation for I know that practice has been around for a long time and will probably with us forever and it goes both ways. Some of the best turkey hot plates I had were cooked by a Chinese chef at my favorite (lamentably, now closed) hofbrau, and if you've been around the California, some of the best chefs and kitchen crews are Latino at some of those Michelin-starred restaurants featuring so-called "fusion" or "California" cuisine.

Lucky Lee's marketing is at fault and it's based on the implication that all Chinese-owned restaurants are not clean and serve unhealthy food even though they must pass the same cleanliness standards as other restaurants and required by their local health inspectors.

In an interview with the NY Times following her controversial statements, Hapsel appeared contrite, saying, "We have been listening and learning, and we have been making changes and we will continue. Shame on us for not being smarter about cultural sensitivities."

"We were never trying to do something against the Chinese community," Haspel continued. "We thought we were complementing an incredibly important cuisine, in a way that would cater to people that had certain dietary requirements."
The ubiquitous Chinese restaurant has been under attack lately. Noted travel host Andrew Zimmern  drew massive outrage from the Asian American community late November 2018 when he made the comment: “I’m saving the souls of all the people from having to dine at all these horse-sh*t restaurants masquerading as Chinese food that are in the Midwest,” in promoting his own restaurant chain, Lucky Cricket.

According to the magazine Chinese Restaurant News, there are over 41,000 Chinese restaurants in the U.S., three times the number of McDonalds franchise unit.

With the San Francisco Bay Area's easy access to locally grown meat, seafood and fresh produce, several Chinese restaurants have discovered that its easy to widen their clientele and increase profitability by placing an emphasis on the quality of their fresh, healthy dishes.

But I return to my original complaint: We shouldn't begrudge paying higher prices for high quality Chinese cuisine. The stereotype of Chinese food automatically means inexpensive means unhealthy food should be thrown out with yesterday's American-inspired chop suey.

ASAM NEWS contributed to this report.

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TGIF Feature:' Halo Halo' visits a Legendary Filipino food stall in Seattle's Pike Place Market.

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Home cooking is the staple in this Seattle eatery.

On a cool, brisk day, there's nothing like a steaming bowl of sinigang, the salty, sour soup I grew up with,. All those memories come flooding back while watching the latest issue of "Halo Halo," Easter's video series about Filipino cuisine.

This week, Francesca Manto visits Oriental Mart Kitchenette, a no-frills food (in a good way) stall that has been a fixture in Seattle's tourist attraction, Pike Place Market, for almost 50 years.

No white tablecloths and black-shirted wait staff here -- just honest, down-home cookin made with love.

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'Halo Halo' is back: Why Max's Restaurant is a beloved Filipino chain

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Francesca Manto interviews the head chef at Max's in Las Vegas.

"Halo Halo," the food video series by Eater celebrating Filipino cuisine, is back for its second season.

To launch the new season, host Francesca Manto has left her home base on the East Coast and has headed west -- to Las Vegas, her hometown.

You don't usually associate fried chicken to Philippine cuisine, but Filipinos, as they have for centuries, will take a foreign or visitor's contributions, adapt it with a Filipino twist and make it their own. They've done that with cuisines from China, Japan, India, Malaysia, Spain and the United States.

Max’s all began after WWII, when American G.I.s would visit the home of Maximo Gimenez’s to hangout, drink, and feast. The G.I.s were there so often that they eventually insisted on paying for their meals, which prompted Maximo to open a cafe (with the G.I.s favorites,  fried chicken and steak, on the menu).

It was Maximo’s niece Ruby Trota who created the recipe for the now-famous fried chicken at Max’s, the one that’s a tender, juicy, and crispy staple for family celebrations. Today, Max’s Restaurant has over 200 locations around the world, each a familiar reminder of home for Filipinos abroad.

So -- that's how fried chicken -- became a staple of Philippine cuisine.

When I was working in South San Francisco, I couldn't understand why my Filipino co-workers were all excited about the opening of a Max's Restaurant in Daly City.

Max's is a chain restaurant and I viewed the news as if a new Denny's had opened. I didn't know the emotional context of having a Philippine eatery open in the U.S. It reminded my co-workers of home. "Home", of course, to the new immigrants will always be the Philippines no matter how long they've been in the U.S. It was their comfort food.

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'Eater' launches 'Halo Halo' series on Filipino cuisine

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Francesca Manto hosts new online series about the cuisine that she grew up up eating.

DON'T TELL Francesca Manto that Filipino cuisine is a trend. 

Manto is Filipino American, and in recent years she’s seen an outpour of trend pieces touting Filipino food as the next-big-thing, and has dealt with people asking her a variation of the following question multiple times: “Well why is Filipino food not as mainstream as, like (Substitute Vietnamese, Thai, Burmese, Peruvian) ... Mexican food?

She’ll answer you in two parts. First she’ll recall the difficulty her family faced after opening and closing a set of Filipino restaurants in Los Angeles in the 1990s, upon first arriving to the States. She’ll also argue that previous representations of Filipino food have failed us all because of inaccuracy — one of the tentpole reasons she created and developed a new video series, Halo Halo, for Eater, the website that caters to foodies.

With no disrespect to the late Anthony Bourdain and Bizarre Foods host Andrew Zimmerman, both of whom predicted that Filipino food would be "the next big thing."

“The people who make those trend statement aren’t Filipino,” she says. “It’s vital that it be represented by Filipinos who grew up with the culture, and want to represent it.”

Halo Halo is a four-part series that explores the changing landscape of Filipino food in America, according to the website. 

Halo halo is the name of a cold Filipino dessert of shaved ice, evaporated milk, sweetened beans, jello topped by ice cream of your choice (usually mango and ube.) The term itself translates to mix-mix, because that's the way you're supposed to eat it -- mix up all the ingredients and then spoon it into your mouth.

As host and producer for the series, Manto is talking to the Filipino and Filipino-American chef and owners who are running restaurants across the northeast.

She was inspired by Bad Saint — the four year old Washington, D.C. phenomenon that’s one of Eater's 38 essential restaurants across America. It was the first time Manto heard of a Filipino restaurant truly getting national buzz. “I thought, ‘Wow! People are lining up for Filipino food’,” she remembers.

Hearing about Bad Saint in 2014 led Manto to her rediscovery of the food she’s been eating since she was born. “I realized how much I don’t know about Filipino food,” she recalls. 

After all, how do you define "traditional" dishes when the cuisine itself is constantly evolving. Today's Filipino cuisine is an amalgamation of American, on top of Japanese, on top of Chinese on top of Indonesian on top of indigenous cuisines.

“Food in the Philippines is evolving differently, chef’s here are going off of memory,” she says about the restaurants featured in Halo Halo like Bad Saint and New York’s Purple Yam. “Food should evolve just as much as a culture, and it’s making these menus very diverse.”

Brooklyn's Purple Yam's adobo, the Philippines' national dish.

Now that production has wrapped on the first four episodes, Manto is interested in visiting cities outside the northeast, and highlighting the Filipino-American communities there. 

"I'm visiting Purple Yam in the very first episode of Halo Halo, and talking to (Amy) Besa about how food in the Philippines both unites and differentiates the country’s more than 7,000 islands," says Manto. "She tells me why it’s difficult to define 'authenticity,' and how Filipino food in America is, in so many ways, its own version of 'halo-halo.'"

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