Mad for Chicken East Meadow — Restaurant in Town of Hempstead

We went in for an early lunch around 11 am. We had been wanting to go to try some halal korean food for long. They do have halal certifications on their wall, but they also serve alcohol there. We asked the attendant, and he confirmed that they do serve alcohol but they make sure not to contaminate the rest. Its a full service restaurant.

We ordered:

Crazy nachos 6/10 Bulgogi over rice 9/10 Korean fried chicken drumsticks and thighs (sweet chili) 6/10 Crispy chicken burger 7/10 Strawberry lychee tea without boba

Crazy nachos were good, but i think for $20 its bit expensive as there were too many chips with not enough toppings.

We didn't want to go with super spicy, so we ordered spice level 2 sweet chili fried chicken. We think it's more on the sweeter side than chilies as being on level 2 there should have been a little tiny kick. We did request them to give us some mango habenero sauce on the side. He was kind enough to serve some. It tasted well and had that spice kick. Fried chicken was crispy, crunchy, and juicy.

Bulgogi over rice was our favorite. Beef was well cooked and well seasoned. It was missing the egg on top. We didnt realize until later.

Crispy chicken sandwich was nothing crazy but good. Fries tasted fresh.

Strawberry lychee tea was good. Loved the way they serve it. As we were one of 1st customers of the day, the attendant said he won't be able to add bobba as it takes some time to prepare it. Which worked for us as we are not a big fan of it anyway.

The attendant was friendly. The restaurant was clean. The Washroom was a bit old and not super tidy. He mentioned the wait time for food would be 20 to 25 minutes, but I think we got all a little earlier.

So overall, it was a...

One of my favorite franchises to eat and this was my first time at this location. It’s as if the chef systematically placed each ingredient together separately at the END to make one dish.

Example: asked for teokbokki with cheese and dumplings. Seemed like the sauce was prepared separately then the rice cakes placed into it (because no flavor and was not marinated enough) and then a whole bunch of CABBAGE pulled into it for what “filler”? I don’t know because again tasteless and raw like they just dumped it in. And the cheese. My god. They sprinkled this miniscule amount of cheese on top of the dumplings. My teokbokki sauce was miniscule to boot.

Let’s get to my other usually favorite dish: bulgogi bowl. Not marinated enough again because you can tell from the taste or you didn’t put enough bulgogi sauce. Definitely not enough meat. And then literally DUMPED raw peppers and carrots and shallots not cooked properly on it.

Now let’s get to the chicken. Okay. I appreciate the flavor in the skin. That’s about where the flavor ended. Again no thought on the actually taste. If I piled off the skin, all I had left was a salt less flavored less chicken.

I’m sorry but even with take out boxes provided, took just the little bit of sauce and rice cakes of the teokbokki and left the rest of my food there.

The 2 star is just because the service was good.

So disappointed. Just because it’s Halal, doesn’t mean you have to lack flavor because people will just come because it’s halal.

The only thing decent was the kimchi fries. Sad. Probably because there is nothing to “cook” or...

I must preface this review with the fact that my wife and I absolutely LOVE Mad For Chicken. Especially the Rockville Centre location. It's one of our favorite places and it absolutely blows [current year] BonChon out of the water. However, this trip to this particular MFC location was disastrous. The place was very busy, only ~8 empty seats available. Several babies in high chairs making lots of noise. Multiple families. I get it, it's busy.

We were seated and no one came to take an order for over 10 minutes, despite a few guys standing behind the counter doing nothing.

Someone finally comes to take our order. We order a drink, an appetizer, and two entrées. Not two minutes later, the guys brings one of the entrées out... It was ice cold. I saw him bring this dish to another table while we were waiting for our order to be taken and they said they already had theirs, so this was just sitting around for 10 minutes behind the counter while they waited for someone to order the same dish?? We didn't get drinks yet, other food wouldn't be out for at least another 10-15 mins. We were so disgusted that they were trying to pass off this leftover dish as a freshly prepared meal that we got up, gave it to the guys at the counter, and went home to cook dinner.

I don't know what was going on there today but this is just horrible, possibly illegal conduct for a restaurant. Inexcusable. We probably won't be back to this location, which is sad because we were so happy to have one so close to home when it opened. Regional needs to re-train the entire team or possibly...