I was very excitedly stalking Nene Chicken's opening in Queens St Mall for many months. All my friends know I love fried chicken especially Korean Fried chicken and I was especially excited as Nene Chicken is South Korea's version of our KFC! I didn't manage to go on their opening day because the rain was so bad but I managed to go later in the week with VGirl, her boyfriend, JGirl, Dr S., and myself.
Parking is terrible, it's the CBD! Hope for weekend parking at the Myer Centre, park further afield and leg it in or catch public transport! It's located near the Starbucks/MacDonald's end of Queens St Mall.
Here is their menu! Don't bother with their website as it has no prices and doesn't actually have the same range of products as their Zomato menu.
We got the bulchi chips to share! It's a mix of deep fried potato chips covered in bulgogi mince, kimchi, then topped with sour cream, tomato and finely shredded green onion. It's pretty messy but also delicious to eat, think of it as a Korean take on chilli fries!
We got the largest box of chicken! Jumbo 16 pieces which allows you to get two types of sauces for an extra $2. We ended up getting the bulgogi and swicy flavours. The bulgogi flavour tastes just like straight up honey and garlic soy, which is essentially what bulgogi is, I like the flavours here and I will always continue to pick honey and garlic soy if asked .
The swicy flavour is their sweet/spicy flavour, tasting a lot like a sweet tomato and honey number, its very sticky and continued to thicken up as we ate it. I think we were pretty evenly divided on which flavour we preferred. I still prefer Momo's chicken though, its just as crispy but has isn't as drenched in sauce. There was a massive pool of sauce at the bottom which I though was a bit much and made eating quite messy.
All their fried chicken comes with a tiny serve of pickled radish and coleslaw, the radish too finely diced to be easy to pick up or share. Ditto the coleslaw, its very finely shredded and was very soggy by the time we got it. That being said, I do appreciate any form of vegetation when I'm eating Korean fried chicken, it alleviates the oiliness! Especially the crunchy pickles.
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| Actually a huge box |
Nene Chicken:
Atmosphere: 5, its a takeaway shop.
Service: 5, brisk and efficient. They package everything neatly for you and also give you plastic gloves to stop your fingers getting dirty!
Food: 8, a good introduction to Korean Fried Chicken but I still love Momo's more!
Toppokki, toppoki, tteokbokki, ddeokbokki, and however else you decide to spell it, is utterly delicious. Little strips of rice cakes that have a very satisfying chew, you can have them in their signature gochujang spicy sauce with fish balls and other goodies or as an accompaniment to your favourite hotpot! H., tells me its an iconic part of your childhood growing up in South Korea, the perfect quick meal or after school snack alongside Korean fried chicken of course! I will use the word tteokbokki for the rest of this page as it is my preferred spelling and what Wikipedia uses, if its good enough for wiki, its good enough for me.
So when we found out there was a shop called 88 Toppokki, we were extremely excited and had to go. Except we kept forgetting it was closed on Tuesdays. Oops. Its located in the Pinelands Shopping centre so its easy to get parking. Its located in the centre of the shop near the fruit shop.
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| Thats us! |
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| Random 88 photos |
Here are some terrible photos of the menu, otherwise check out Zomato for clearer ones.
The first time I went here was when I was looking for some fried chicken after work. I bought myself half a honey soy chicken for takeaway and chose the tteokbokki as my side. I like that you can choose between several different sides such as the grilled tteokbokki on a stick, rice, chips, regular stir fried tteokbokki or prawn and veggies. I love variety!
This fried chicken was very crispy and moist but I found the sauce a touch sweet so it's not my absolute favourite fried chicken to have. That being said, its definitely not bad though, and lots of people agree with me! They do a deal of 10 drumsticks for $10 and its always sold out when I try and get it.
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| Yassss |
The stir fried tteokbokki is the regular tteokbokki you would order at any Korean restaurant, barring the fact that this is much more obviously a home style slash side dish version. How can you tell? The sheer number of bulk veggies present! Carrot, cabbage, green onion and zucchini a plenty, the fish cakes aren't as prominent but this is still an enjoyable dish. Just think of this as balancing out that chicken you just got! The sauce is a wonderful fluorescent orange from the spicy gochujang paste but despite that its not unbearably spicy like Madtongsan's tteokbokki, you can happily still eat this without stopping.
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| Yassss |
I went back here a second time with H., and A*! H., and I had the same days off and were tossing up between here and Rogue Spice Canteen. H., insisted that we should eat the special hotpot while I was arguing that we couldn't possibly finish a hotpot off between us. Then I saw A* was online on Facebook and I knew she would come with us because she freaking loves tteokbokki. She loves it so much that once when we went to a Korean restaurant, she made us leave because it didn't sell tteokbokki, that was the time we went to FunnyFunny for dinner.
Anyway, we got the triple fried chicken plate, it came with honey soy chicken, plain fried chicken and a sweet and spicy sauce fried chicken. there was also a lightly dressed garden salad that we mostly ignored. A* loves plain fried chicken. I have a deep love of honey soy fried chicken and guess what H., loves? That's right, spicy fried chicken. We were the perfect team hahaha!
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| <333 |
We also got these banchan to go with our fried chicken from left to right its caramelised sweet potato, kimchi and soy marinated fish cakes! I love the sweet potato and the fish cakes the most, I could eat an entire bowl of these without getting sick. I often find myself having to move them away from me so I can't actually get to them before my main meal arrives.
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| Yesssss |
H., was prodding us towards getting the special hotpot and I was being annoying by saying there was no guarantee that A* would agree to getting it. A* is an easy going girl though and she did agree. We got this in the regular size with three additional toppings which cost an extra $8-10 from memory. The ones we picked were an extra serve of deep fried seaweed rolls, quail eggs and tteokbokki since it didn't automatically come with them in there. There are a lot of other ingredients included in the hotpot such as spam, bulgogi beef, pork belly, enoki mushrooms, sweet potato noodles, calamari, deep fried gyoza, whole eggs, cabbage, mussels, prawns, onions, garlic, deep fried seaweed rolls and ramen noodles. We were told by our waitress to eat the deep fried gyoza and seaweed rolls first otherwise they would get too soggy. The soup had a wonderful savoury flavour that wasn't too spicy the best part was fishing out all the different ingredients to eat, you never knew what you were going to get!
H., loves deep fried seaweed rolls and she said this was the first place in Brisbane that she found made them. They're a battered roll of sushi seaweed that is wrapped around a bundle of soft vermicelli noodles, sounds kind of bland but the batter is really tasty! It tastes exactly like the batter on the plain fried chicken.
I really enjoy eating Korean hotpot much more than our Vietnamese version, lau, or Chinese style hotpot just due to the sheer number of ingredients present. Also for the fact that its already layered in for me, where as I would have to grab everything I want and dunk it in. Korean hotpot is already perfectly portioned to boil down to thick saucy goodness! It goes without saying that this place does the best hotpot I've found in Brisbane so far!
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| So so good! |
88 Topokki
Atmosphere: 7, a cosy little place to hide from the world, as we did when it was absolutely bucketing down the day we went.
Service: 7, pretty good actually. The shop is quite small so the waitresses are always lurking nearby, ready to help or top up your banchan dishes!
Food: 9, I love their hotpots and their fried chicken isn't bad either! I love that you can add whatever you want to the hotpot as well <3
Jubi told me about this place a long time ago. Before when she lived up here in Brisbane before her family relocated to the Gold Coast, it was her local Asian takeaway joint!
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| This place! |
Dr S., C., JGirl, VGirl and I all went together and we had to wait a while for a table since we hadn't bothered getting a reservation despite it being a Friday night haha. The restaurant was packed and they were also doing a roaring trade in takeaway food as we watched. I wish that they did delivery but I guess they would be incredibly busy doing that! Here is their menu!
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| Bamboo styled cutlery |
I got the salt and pepper calamari as an entree. It was crispy tempura coating with five spice powder mixed, the onions were well caramelised and add some sweetness to the dish. Did you know JGirl doesn't eat seafood DESPITE BEING JAPANESE? She eats sashimi and that's it, everything else makes her nauseated, she understands the appeal but can't stomach the taste no matter how often she tries it. I pretty much ate this myself after I gave everyone a piece.
I also got wing wings aka deboned and pork mince stuffed chicken wings that have been deep fried. It tasted like someone had shoved a spring roll inside of a chicken wing, it consisted of pork mince, mung bean noodles, water chestnuts and coriander. The technique is wonderful but I'd rather eat something else for my entree.
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| Blurry |
VGirl got the vegetarian pad thai, she said it was a touch sweet but hoovered it down very quickly. There were cashew pieces, carrot, zucchini, baby corn, green onions, kai lan and onion in this pad thai. It's an interesting mix since vegetarian pad thais are usually just chockers with tofu pieces, this is kinda like when your mum wants you to eat more veggies and adds whatever in.
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| Your basic stir fry mix |
I got green thai curry fried rice, I really like the idea of frying in spice pastes into fried rice like how Indonesian fried rices are. I love that spicy tomato based paste. Anyway, I quite liked the heat in this green thai curry fried rice, it had a great aroma just like the regular curry. It had pieces of chicken breast, egg. kaffir lime and Thai basil pieces. I ended up taking this back to work for my dinner. The rice was a touch gluggy though.
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| A giant chunk of rice |
The other girls, Dr S., C., and JGirl got this beef red curry to share as they had already eaten and really just wanted to chat and hang out with us. This had the same vegetables with the addition of broccoli, capsicum and snow peas so I guess that's actually a bigger change. The beef was tender and the sauce was average.
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| I've had better |
I got the soft shell crab salad, I thought I had ordered the soft shell crab papaya salad so when I received this I was absolutely furious. I cannot review this at all because all my thoughts were tainted by the fact that I got a garden salad instead of a papaya salad. It's been over eight months and I still get angry thinking about, I don't know why I didn't send it back.
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| Stupid ThatSeriousGirl |
Sings Asian Kitchen
Atmosphere: 5, busy Asian restaurant.
Service: 5, nothing spectacular.
Food: 5, I didn't really enjoy my meal here and neither did the other girls. We were wondering why it was so busy considering what we got. Maybe we picked the wrong food, but there's plenty of other Asian/Thai restaurant other to go to.
