AJUKER CHICKEN ~ Toronto ON

-- Ajuker Chicken is NOW CLOSED --

NOV 2012

This was one interesting adventure. It starts over a year ago, maybe even two. I had heard about a Korean joint that did Korean style chicken wings. My understanding of Korean wings are that they are very crispy. Sounds good. Where to get them? Ajuker was the place what I kept hearing as the place to go. 3 times I went to Korea town and could not find this place. Three times over that maybe 2 years. But one November night, I got there.

I don't know why I didn't find the place. Well maybe its because the English is tiny on the sign. Anyway, I found the place, and even though I was dining solo and would normally feel a little uncomfortable in a place I couldn't even see inside, I sucked it up and went in.

Inside the place was simple and felt kind of thrown together. Throughout the place were tv's playing a Korean . . . game show? variety show? I didn't know. There were a few times that the screen looked a little odd, and then I realized the show was being played off of a laptop and I think being watched more by staff. The crowd inside was Korean and young and lots of people seemed to be enjoying varieties of fried chicken.

photo from JH on yelp

The above photo is not mine (I took one but it didn't turn out). I knew by the pictures there was chicken wings, but I could not read the menu. What confused me was the pictures at the top that showed wings and Large-Small, but what was that? And then at the bottom had the title WINGS. An older woman (owner maybe?) came to take my order. She did not really speak English and I don't speak Korean. I tried to ask about the wings . . . and it was a very challenging conversation for us both.

First I wanted the 'Bul-dak' or hot spicy chicken sauce, but was told no. I asked what kind of wings the others were, and in broken English I basically got 'plain' 'soy sauce' 'honey garlic' and the last I couldn't understand but it seemed special and had green onions. So I ordered that one, and I was told it was $2. Sure, I just wanted wings.

A plastic bottle of water was brought to my table, as well as the Coke I ordered. I also got a side dish of sweet radishes, which are great with spicy dishes. I didn't have to wait long and my wings had arrived.

I had no clue as to what was coming to my table. I mean, I had my idea of what the wings would be like, but I did not expect the following:

Some sort of weird bird nest of onion on chicken wings with sauce mixed over and some sesame seeds. I was lost as to how I was supposed to eat this; I mean, do you bite the onion with the wings? Separately  Was the onion just garnish? What do I do??!?!?!  Under that onion forest were about 12 wings in there.

The wings were irregular in shape. Some of the wings were large, others small. Some wingettes had the tip, others not. Some were cut in half.

The chicken was perfectly cooked. The skin was very crispy and had a nice crunchy (the last wings not so much). The meat was tender. Did I mention the perfectly crispy skin? It was a crispy coating like a perfect chicken McNugget coating.

The sauce was . . . interesting. I wouldn't call it tasty. It was a seemingly mix of soy sauce and ginger and, well I don't know. It was kind of sweet, kind of sour, kind of bitter too. The green onion gave it a kind of fresh kick. I have never had anything like it. It was an experience, but not one I would go through again. 

FINAL SCORE: Ajuker was quite the experience for me. As a non-Korean, it was a little strange atmosphere and talking with staff was difficult. My chicken was perfectly cooked: crispy and tender chicken. The sauce was, just strange and I don't recommend it. I would love to try the honey garlicky one, or even plain. I would LOVE to have the spicy sauce, but they don't do that. 6/10

AJUKER CHICKEN
680 Bloor Street West (and other locations)


PS: if you can translate anything, please let me know what I was eating, or what I could have eaten!

Circus Circus Buffet ~ Las Vegas NV

OCTOBER 2012

On Hallowe'en, LJ and I took a trip to Las Vegas. Neither of us had ever been, we had time, so we just went. We were worried about our trip not happening as this was the time of Hurricane Sandy that was shutting down flights all over the place. Turns out we got there without any issues. 

photo I took later that night

We arrived on the Wednesday and  headed straight to our hotel: Circus Circus. The place had it's pro's and con's and I won't get into the interesting stories about the place here on the blog, but ask me sometime. Anyways, we were starved and headed to one of the restaurants advertised at the hotel. But when we got there, it was closed (like many things we found in Vegas). So we headed to the hotel buffet instead.

Our time zones were off, so the place was dead inside. A lot of the stations were not running, and not a lot of things were being refilled because, well, no one was eating it. There was a mix of options from Tex-Mex to seafood to all day breakfast. Not the best buffet options I have seen, but not terrible either.

The atmosphere and decor were nothing special. Clean though.

I was very excited to see they had fountain Wild Cherry Pepsi! It's hard to get cherry pop back in Ontario, so I took full advantage of the self serve. The orange pop was awesome too.

I enjoyed the Tex-Mex: made myself a soft shell taco (although you could have hard shell) with rice and beef and nacho cheese and jalapenos. The bacon was, well, I just couldn't resist a strip of bacon.

So not really a wing review, but they did have fried chicken. They also had fried shrimp, and some nice roasted potatoes.

The fried chicken was decent. Breaded, slightly crispy. It was ok. The shrimp was ok. The whole buffet was ok. But I had no desire to go back. Well, maybe for Cherry Pepsi. But not the food. Not really.

Circus Circus Buffet
2880 S Las Vegas Boulevard, Las Vegas Nevada USA
circuscircus.com

FATBURGER ~ Las Vegas NV

OCT 2012

Day 3 of being in Las Vegas. We had a busy day touring around, and had a great evening at Cirque de Soliel's "Ka" (amazing show by the way). We wanted something to eat but just had no clue where to go. We walked a bit on the strip and we came across Fatburger.

There were two distinctly different parts to this chain (that I had never heard of before this moment) and I'm assuming its a Las Vegas difference: the fast food/take out inside and the bar/patio outside. We sat on the outside because the weather was awesome.

Coming from an region that has snow for possibly 5-6 month, seeing a permanant outdoor establishment seems odd. Also, the proliferation of booze everywhere in Vegas makes bars seem less likely when I can head into any casino and get a drink for free.

Inside is self service but outside, we had a server. Jenna was friendly but not super available. It took a little while for our drinks to come. I had Coke, and it tasted amazing - like it was made with cane sugar. I asked Jenna if it was anything special and she said no, asking if it was ok. I said it was great, and she said good, most people complain that it isn't good. Huh.

I wanted to sample a bunch of things off the menu, but my and LJ's tastes were in alignment that night. Burger and chili cheese fries.

The above is their "Small" burger ($4.50). You can go Med, Lg, XXL and XXL, a 24oz tripple burger for $13. Toppings are standard but you can add on bacon, cheese, chili as well as an egg. The above burger just had a few standards on it (onion, cheese, mayo, pickles, relish) and I had a bite and agreed with LJ, it was tasty. Nice bark on the flatop grilled burger, tender meat, fresh bun. A little greasy but it was really good.

The chili cheese fries ($5) my look very tasty, or very revolting depending on your position. I thought they looked heart cloggingly awesome. It was actually melted cheese (as opposed to cheese sauce). The fries were ok, but really they are just a vehicle for the chili and cheese. You also get to choose 'fat' fries or 'skinny'; we went with skinny.

Oh it turns out they had wings too.

There is no mention of wings on Fatburger's website, nor were they available inside the restaurant, only the patio/bar area. So this might be a Vegas thing only. Wings came in orders of 6 or 12, and the price was pretty inflated, but then again, it is the strip.

My wings came with exactly one celery stick and one carrot stick. I mean, really what was the point? And then my dip on the side was a packet of David Newman blue cheese dressing. This just seemed a little silly.

 The wings were pretty big surprisingly. Large at best, on the larger side of medium at their worst. They were also pretty meaty. The skin was crisp, and even had an airy quality which made for a nice snap when biting into them. The wings were nice and saucy too.

There is only hot and mild sauces to choose from, so I went with hot. FYI, it's not even hot. So mild and maybe medium. But I didn't really expect heat from a fast food chain. It was a classic Buffalo sauce, very orange, and pretty good. 

 FINAL SCORE:
These were some tasty wings. I wasn't expecting that. Good size wings. Crispy skin. Tasty sauce. The chili cheese fries were a great side. The burgers were pretty good too. I would definitely go back to Fatburger and it turned out to be our best meal in Vegas. That's cool and sad at the same time. 6/10

Fatburger
3763 S Las Vegas Boulevard, Las Vegas NV USA
fatburger.com

BUFFALO WINGS ~ Las Vegas NV

OCTOBER 2012

Across from our hotel the Circus Circus is the Riviera Casino. Inside they have, well a crappy little food court. We were getting a late lunch/ early supper and were desperate. LJ went to a Mexican place, but I was drawn to Buffalo Wings.

I was pumped.  I mean, there wasn't anything else in this place I wanted in the first place, but a chicken wing joint? Awesome.

I wasn't super hungry, so I wasn't going to try all the things I would have wanted to (waffle fries, potato skins, jalapeno poppers). I went with their combo of 12 wings (split into two flavours) with fries (I went with curly fries) and a drink.

The lady behind the counter took my order. I watched her take the wings out of a plastic bag that went into the deep fryer. Not impressive, but oh well. 10 minutes later I had my order.

Styrofoam and tinfoiled wings. Mmmmm.

The curly fries were ok. There was no seasoning to them, so they just end up being fun shaped fries.

My blue cheese dip. Standard, tasty, and had chunks of blue cheese. There were also veggies to dip, but I didn't need them.

Wings come in denominations from 6 to 75 to 100.

The wings were a variety of sizes: mostly medium to large, but there were some small ones too. A real hodgepodge. Also some were roughly cut so there might be chunks of the tip still partially attached. I just imagined them buying these wings from some sketchy dealer where they are dirt cheap.

Even though they were fresh out of the fryer, they were not crispy. And there was a ton of sauce, which also made them soggy. They were not enjoyable.

SUICIDE

They have mild, then hot, then suicide. That tells me that Hot is actually medium and Suicide is actually hot. There was no real heat to them.

 Flavour wise Suicide was ok. It didn't seem like Buffalo sauce. Well it did, just not that great a take on them.

HONEY BBQ

I split the flavours I wanted to sample some of the menu. I wanted to go with Hot BBQ, but figured Suicide would be good enough. So I went with Honey BBQ. The Honey BBQ was also, ok. A little HFCS-ish sweet. 

FINAL SCORE:

Well, the whole wing dinner was a failure. I kept going back and forth between the wings not because I wanted to go back and forth, but I didn't want to keep eating the wings. In fact, I couldn't even finish them. Soggy, sickly sweet sauces and untender chicken. No thank you, no thank you. 3.5/9

photo courtesy of Google street view

Buffalo Wings

2901 S Las Vegas Boulevard (inside the Riviera Casino/Hotel), Las Vegas NV USA

Buffalo Wings on Facebook

THE VILLAGE IDIOT PUB ~ Toronto ON

OCTOBER 2012

October is my favourite month of the year - with Hallowe'en being a big reason. And although it wasn't Hallowe'en yet, it was time for the Toronto Zombie Walk 2012. My buddy Ricky came in from Coburg for our second year at the event where basically thousands of people dress up as zombies, walk around down, and have fun. We had a few hours to kill and we needed some lunch, so we headed down the street to the Village Idiot Pub.

I've been to the Village Idiot a few times, but had never done a wing review. It's location is right across from the AGO (Art Gallery of Ontario), just down from OCAD University, and not far from my own building.

Inside, this place has, well you can see for yourself. The crowd tends to be older folks and the art museum crowd. Our waiter was, well he was a character; sometimes we couldn't tell if he was joking or not. We went with joking.

The Village Idiot has a ton (or tonne) of beers from around the world. They have a 'British' pub type menu, but they sometime venture off the traditional path.

Rick went with a burger. But not just any burger: the piri piri burger. A standard patty, but a thick layer of their homemade piri piri sauce coated the top of the burger. It had a good kick. Rick said the fries were ok. Burger, ok too.

I went with wings, but I also added onion rings.

I was happy with these classic cooked onion rings. Crispy, the onion mostly snapped when bit into.

Also with my wings came dip. Now while most places give you blue cheese dip, or ranch, or even dill. At the village idiot I got tartar sauce. I don't think I have ever gotten tartar sauce with my wings. It was different (and made a good dip for the onion rings) but not bad. Somehow I think I got the wrong dip, but who knows.

The wings come by the pound, with Village Idiot wings being about 7 wings in said pound.

They don't list their sauces, so I had to go on my memory (my bad) so there might be some I am missing, but it wasn't a long list.

These were a decent sized wing. Mostly large, and fairly meaty. The texture was unique. I think the wings are deep fried (giving them a starting crispy skin) but are then tossed in sauce and either baked or grilled. This technique is fine, but in execution these wings were dried out and tough, and the sauce looses something in the process.

I went different on the sauce front. When Ricky ordered Piri Piri, I thought that sounded good, so I asked our waiter if I could get that on my wings. He said yes, but was reluctant because of the heat. Well, they did have heat, that's for sure. It was a dry heat that built and built. Flavour wise it was good, but I think I would go with something more traditional next time.

FINALS SCORE:
I think the Village Idiot is a quaint little pub that's great for a drink. But if your looking for good grub, it's just ok. My wings were ok: over cooked/dried out, with some good heat and a decent size. I mean, you wouldn't be an idiot to order them  ... but I'm not crazy about them either. 5/10

The Village Idiot Pub
126 McCaul Street, Toronto ON
villageidiotpub.ca


PS: here is my zombie costume: I'm a baby eater. I like me my baby back ribs. Get it? Maybe next year I will have a dead chicken . . . Zombie Lord of the Wings . . .