Hot Star: Large Fried Chicken in Richmond

Hot Star Large Fried Chicken is open in Richmond and is a chain restaurant originating from Taiwan. They are best known for their massive chicken cutlets served in a white and blue sleeve. It’s essentially the size of your face.

My friend wanted to come here for her birthday, so we made sure to come here right when it opened on the weekend to avoid any lines. It has been a month since opening, but they are still in soft opening phase and a lot of the menu items are still coming soon. We thought it would be smoother by now but sadly not.

Interior

There are tables and seats on either side of the restaurant. Most people we saw did get it to go. We personally loved eating it when it’s hot and crispy.

Menu

Original Large Fried Chicken

This comes in a few varieties – Salt + Pepper, Spicy, Seaweed, Plum, and Curry. They didn’t have a lot of these flavours so we went with Salt + Pepper and Plum.

Salt + Pepper reminded us of a huge Taiwanese Salt and Peppery Chicken but in a cutlet format. Definitely our favourite of the bunch. The exterior was crisp and the inside was moist and flavourful.

Plum on the other hand was similar but had the sour plum notes in the batter. I still prefer the Salt + Pepper flavour.

Crispy Large Fried Chicken

This comes in 2 flavours – Spicy and Seaweed. We went with Seaweed. You can tell right away that the batter is different than the other set of chicken, plus the seaweed sprinkles are on the outside. The seaweed flavour does come through.

Popcorn Chicken

We got it spicy (medium) and it was similar to the large cutlets in terms of flavour. For $7.99, it’s very expensive for what you get. I would rather get the big pieces of chicken for better value.

Plum Sweet Potato

I was really into this and one of the most surprising items we tried. The soft sweet potato is very delicious and the batter on the outside is crispy and has a crunch to it. The textures worked very well. In terms of flavour, the sweet and salty of the plum and sweet potato worked well.

Fried King Oyster Mushroom

I did enjoy the mushrooms since I am a huge mushroom fan. A bit of crunch on the outside and the juicy mushrooms hiding inside. This item is pricey for the amount that you get.

Taipei 101 Corn

This big piece of corn has nice flavour and was surprisingly juicy and sweet. A hard item to share but if you wanted to have it all to yourself, that works too.

Fried Vegetable Spring Rolls

Each order comes with 5 pieces and these were pretty average spring rolls. Nothing interesting at all. I would pass on these.

Fried Buns

The fried buns has a few options of bun filling – Creamy Custard, Taro, or Black Sesame. We went with creamy custard since it sounded good.

These came piping hot but the creamy custard was sweet and not that creamy. Not what I imagined for the custard.

Blue Curacao Yogurt

There a a bunch of non alcoholic drinks on the menu. They are all very colourful and sweet. The Blue Curacao Yogurt was sweet and tasted like those asian yogurt drinks. It was ok but we wouldn’t get it again.

Final Thoughts

We are still waiting for many of the menu items to be available but still no idea when. We ordered almost everything that was possible to order off the soft opening menu. We had our eyes on the hot cheese fried chicken but sadly not available yet.

Everything is essentially deep fried but it took a very long time for our order to come out. We were the first group there and everyone else after also had to wait a long time for their order too. Given that they are in the soft opening phase, hopefully it improves. You don’t want to order here if you’re in a rush or short on time.

For what we could order, the only items I really liked were the Salt + Pepper Original Chicken and the Plum Sweet Potatoes. Everything else I wouldn’t get again.

Address:
1623-4791 Mcclelland Road, Richmond, BC V6X 0M5

Website:
http://www.hot-star.ca/