bb.q Chicken Lynnwood — Restaurant in Lynnwood

Me and my Wife eat at the H Mart food area quite often as it's a great source for many different cuisines. When we saw bb.q chicken starting to open up we were so excited as we have friends in Southern California that rave about their Korean fried chicken.

But sadly I can not say that I would recommend this restaurant, especially compared to the rest of this amazing wonder of a food court. Once I got over the price for the meal, and decided that I would try it. I ordered the #1 combo secret sauce with dukbokki. Then me and my wife went over to Home Town Korean and ordered something for her. By the time my food showed up she had already received her food from the other restaurant and had eaten it, got a to-go container, and packed up her left overs. I decided to get up and walk over to the stall once I saw her get her to-go box. While I was there I noticed the lady who brought out the orders bringing out to-go orders with numbers past my order number. She then suddenly noticed my non to-go order and asked the front counter girl about it, who said "No I haven't done that one". The cook then instantly finished my order within just minute or so of noticing that my order was before the ones she just called.

Once my food finally arrived, I was slightly sad to notice the amount of breading on the pieces vs the meat, and the stickiness of the sauce. Once I got through the wing, leg, and one of the breast pieces, I moved onto the last breast piece just to find out that it was just a breaded piece of the breast plate with almost no chicken at all on it. I finished up the rest of my chicken and then tried the dukbokki. Wow this was seriously the worst part of the meal, it tastes like if Campbell's soup tried to make dukbokki with their tomato base. Very salty and tomato forward, and the dukbokki just falls apart when you try to pick it up.

We brought up the issue with the girl working the counter, and she just picked at the chicken piece that was mostly breast bone. She didn't have anything to say or offer except "That's how our chicken is" Then we mentioned the disappointing dukbokki, and her response was about the same "That's how we do it".

Seriously wish I would have taken pictures before taking the try over to...

I previously loved this place as the chicken was well fried, flavor was on point, and there was a somewhat decent mix of white & dark meat chicken.

Tonight, I decided to pick up the golden fried whole chicken for $27.99 pre-tax on a Saturday (2022/01/29) at around 5pm. I'm aware that good fried chicken takes some time to prepare, but my order took about 45 minutes to complete. Since I got my order to go, I didn't really get a chance to enjoy it until I got home, but even then, there were a few issues I found with the chicken:

1. The golden fried chicken was essentially flavorless, like they didn't even salt or season the chicken before breading & frying it
2. I received a high proportion of white meat vs dark meat, I think I got like 3-4 drumsticks (like 1 piece of thigh meat) & then the rest were either wing portions or cut up pieces of breast meat. I'm aware a "whole chicken" is supposed to be 20 pieces & I got at least that many pieces, but some of the pieces were chicken nugget sized.
3. The chicken seemed to be over fried to the point of being really dry and chewy.
4. The white pickled radish that came with the chicken looked a bit old. Not the normal bright white, but had this dull/yellowish hue to them.

It appears as if the quality of this has gone down significantly from when I used to order from them...

I had originally meant to come here when they first opened, but it seemed that the menu was a little all-over-the-place and the reviews were not great.

They’ve since changed their menu and kept it much more simple. You essentially have three options: combo #1 & #2 (5 pc of chicken (tossed in your choice of sauce) with either a side of spicy rice cakes or cream cheese balls ($11.99)), a cup of chicken (8 pc of chicken tossed in your choice of sauce ($11.99)), and a whole chicken (20pc tossed in your choice of sauce ($24.99)). If you choose the mala hot chicken or stir-fried, add $1.

If you're not sure what flavor you want, they have samples of some for you to try before ordering. I got a cup of Mala Hot Chicken to-go;$13.25 after tax.

The chicken itself was good. It had a nice crunch, good flavor, and excellent heat. I did have three dislikes though. The chicken itself is not very meaty and that hurts its value. I got it to-go, bit into it 10 minutes after picking it up and it was already relatively cold. Seems like the containers they use may not trap heat well. I also think ~$15 after tax + tip is quite steep.

All in all, it's worth trying. I'll probably come back again to try...