Fried chicken is a dish that’s really hard to get wrong but really hard to be exceptional. Hot Bird serves good chicken but nothing particularly special.

I had quite a high eggs-pectation for the place looking at the other reviews and recommendations from friends. Went with the Peck Group set which was RM50. Came with 5 pieces, fries and coleslaw. Went with no heat and a mild cause I’m a wimp that can’t take spicy :(

THE GOOD: Hands down the best FRIED chicken (emphasis on the fried) I’ve had in a long time. A good piece of fried chicken is piping hot when served where you can still squeeze the oil out. The meat was extremely tender and juicy. Half an hour in and my meal was still steaming. Also, the meat was full and the skin wasn’t hiding an empty crevice of air.

The mild flavour spice on the skin was actually really good and I can only imagine how the other spicy levels would have tasted (albeit the chicken itself wasn’t fully marinated). Mild was already pretty spicy so if you like the heat, this is the place to be. It doesn’t have the artificial spicy flavour you’d get from Mcd or bigger fast food chains.

The coleslaw was also really good. Hit and miss depending on your preference as my partner didn’t like it but I loved it.

Ambience is as you’d expect from a fast food store.

THE BAD This is mostly preference-based but I found the skin to be very bread-y and relatively flavourless for the no heat. It doesn’t have a crunch to it, more like a slightly soggy toast. It also has a strange powder like texture. I ended up just removing all the skin as it wasn’t adding anything to the chicken. Whilst the seasoning did have flavour, everything else did not.

Fries were less than im-peckable. The seasoning again was great but the fries were hard and tasted like cheap frozen fries. They were also mostly lukewarm which was a stark contrast to the lovely piping hot meat.

OVERALL: I do think Hot Bird is definitely worth the meal compared to other fast food chains, but in portion only. If you like hot and spicy fried chicken, this is worth a try but don’t expect a burst of flavour with your chicken.

Hoping they’ll find a unique flavour because the chicken was cooked to per-peck-tion. Worth the try only if you are curious.