初炸小食店 — Restaurant in Da'an District

Legendary Deep-Fried Popcorn Chicken

At first, I wondered, how much better can it really be compared to others? But after the first bite—damn, it’s on a whole different level. That much of a difference. No wonder it’s so famous.

Personally, I’m not even that into popcorn chicken, but I love fried chicken bones—the soft bone gives that satisfying slight crunch, and the thin layer of meat around it is surprisingly juicy, not dry at all.

Another must-order for me is the deep-fried squiddd—absolutely delicious! The other day, I accidentally ordered the wrong thing, and my friend ended up loving it: deep-fried pork knuckles. I was shocked that they even fry this, since I usually don’t eat it—it has no meat! But I gave it a try, and wow, I totally get why my friend enjoyed it. They fry it so well—crispy on the outside, the batter isn’t too thick, and the inside stays juicy.

Even the fried vegetables are impressive! The texture isn’t dry at all, almost like fried meat, with a juicy interior. Honestly, I’m amazed. This place knows what they’re doing—everything is...

Lower than our expectations

We saw the local TV program to know this small store and found the ranking in Google was 4.4, To what we experienced, quite frankly it was not that good and surely this will not encouraging to revisit in the very near future

Seems all foods are deep fried, it is hard for us to tell what is inside, as wrapped by flour, not tasty at all, only thing that is not oily, believe they pan fry it after deep fry

At first we plan to rank it 3, however we were disappointed there were no interaction at all during our meal, when we arrived simply asked us to fill in the order form by ourselves, then wait for the foods to come, while we were seated in the bar table, the reason we ranked it 2 to remind them it is so important and we expected the interaction from them as a small store (less than 10 seats, only 4 customers during our visit).

We observed the two youngest working so hard in the kitchen and very creative

We love the imported beers (from Portugal and Belgium)...

First visited in 2020 after watching Buzzfeed’s Worth It series, but it was closed then. Came again today and thankfully it was open :) the portion is pretty generous (we ordered chicken cartilage (60 NTD) and chicken chunks (60NTD), with pig trotters (95 NTD) and king oyster mushrooms (30 NTD). While the flavours come through nicely and the overall taste was light (wasn’t too oily), I think it was a bit salty - would definitely recommend adding either their sparkling wine (650 NTD for a whole bottle) or buying a drink after. I think the pig trotters are also better shared with more people too :) I personally prefer the cartilage pieces to chunks, as the soft bone gave it additional texture!

Limited seats available so do come early! But there were also many people buying take out instead of dine in, so best to order early so that you don’t need to...