My work is crazy huge – it takes up both sides of an entire street, because cancer drugs need space to shine, I suppose. Unfortunately though, this year wasn’t looking so good on the annual site wide Christmas lunch in auditorium le massive because I’m not actually sure I’m at liberty to divulge such information, those crazy secretive regulatory cats…

As a result of minus venue, the usual sit down saga with mega roast feast was not on the cards for us but good on you, whatever department you were that organised this – 2013 Christmas consisting of a ton of awesome food vans camped out one of the carparks, Mariachi band included. Andele!

To be honest, all I was hoping for was a paella van and a crème brûlée truck, so I was slightly disappointed when the billboard was announced: Thai, gourmet sausages, wood fired pizzas, tacos, bagel burgers and ice cream. Ah first world problems much? I was already planning my makeshift paella/brûlée scheme – combine some sausage with pizza sauce and fish from taco shop with the rice from thai joint and bring a blowtorch to somehow magically incinerate the top of a Dixie cup (where there’s a will!)

WHITE GUY COOKS THAI FOOD VAN
Photo courtesy of bizniz FB page – because it’s a lot less scary without a massive crowd of zombie like nerds clawing away for a feed

Come 11:45am, I walked out to the festivities and I had no idea where to go, it just smelt that amazing. Walking past each food van and scoping out the menu, I wasn’t sure where to start, then the magical words beckoned upon me “Korean fried chicken with rice and asian coleslaw” from White Guy Cooks Thai (location via Twitter/Facey). White Guy? Thai? The fuck? While I understand the whole ironically cute aspect of this name, at the end of the day, you’re making a point that you’re not genetically predisposed to making South East Asian food, so what the shit are you doing putting Korean dishes on your menu?

Alas, I had no choice but to do it. “One fried chicken please”.

This was one hefty snack. 5 deep fried chicken wings jizzed with lime Kewpie and garnished with nori seaweed strips and fresh chilli, served with a side of fluffy steamed white rice and fresh asian coleslaw.

The batter thickness was on the medium side and mega crispy, thanks to the Panko* breadcrumb contribution. It was a little too salty, something which you started noticing after the third wing. Maybe if they used bigger pieces of chicken this wouldn’t have been so much of an issue, but I just found myself scoffing down more rice and coleslaw to even out the sodium chloride content, which meant less capacity in belly time for other yum food!

I love the little idiosyncrasies that come with this meal. Spicing up the wings with fresh chilli instead of the more conventional hot sauce meant every bite was a lucky dip of ‘holy shit my mouth is on fire’ explosion (a good thing by the way!) and the dressing-free asian coleslaw was so crunchy and refreshing which only reinforced my theory that salads don’t ever need dressing (if they do, it’s the salad that needs to be improved). The lime Kewpie mayo hybrid was joy, but it was a shame there wasn’t much of it with the meal. It was only really enough for the 2 or 3 wings on top.

Seaweed, Panko*, Kewpie, sounds more Japanese than Korean, but hey they all look the same** and it was a satisfying feed so, you know…can’t blame white guy for his take on it. Well done ol’ chap. You seem to have done well, your fried chicken was popular, not long before you were sold out of it!

So…what’s the overall verdict?

CRISPINESS: So much yes. Breadcrumbs in fried batter is so underrated, and you can’t ever go wrong with Panko*. Seriously!

OIL POCKET FACTOR: This one hit a bit of a hard note with some. I personally rate the mini explosion of oil in my mouth when I bite into a hot fresh fried chicken, but it seems quite a few peeps are against this because it’s just too much grease overload. To be honest, what’s the point of even eating fried chicken if you don’t like oil? Anyway, oil pocket factor for this was zero, which pretty much everyone except me and my compadre were very happy with. If healthy fried chicken is your thing, White Guy has you covered.

SIZE: This is a solid sized snack for sure. The rice and coleslaw make quite the filler, just keep in mind it falls a little short of main meal size.

PRICE: Suffer in your jocks, everyone else! This was FREE for me because my work paid for it, so no doubt it was totally worth the zero monetary output. Gloating aside though (because I’m a pro reviewer) I’m assuming for the rest of you heathens, as this is the product of a trendy Melbourne food truck, it’s safe to say this would cost somewhere between the $9 – $90 mark. Hell, I’m not even sure if the combo I had is something they sell normally or they customed up a meal just for us special chumps (like how I customed up the word ‘custom’ just for this? Too good!)

COME HERE AGAIN? Yup I would, although going by the overpriced food truck craze that’s currently sweeping Melbourne, I’d be dragging along some lovestruck chump to fund the feed. Haha, oh, I shouldn’t say that, I don’t even know how much it costs.

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*Product may or may not have been Panko, but it was definitely something that tasted like it.

**As consolation for having a Malaysian heritage, I hereby proclaim amnesty towards making racist jokes against the entire Asian race.