]
Now, the chain has gone and mucked it all up. It has changed the
chicken bowls. The meat, as you can see, is not cut into the neat
strips, but kind of hacked up into random chunks, as if it were pre-chopped. The best part of the chicken, the skin, exists in scraps
and is otherwise detached from the meat. Though the veggies don't
appear to be mired in the gloppy gravy as
they used to be (the carrots and broccoli actually snap now),
they're mixed up with the poultry in a messy pile. This is problematic. I like to decide for myself when I want to start into the veggies. Another problem: The teriyaki sauce on my serving was poured onto just one side of the bowl, soaking into the
rice but never really touching the chicken.
To summarize: I don't like it.
And on top of this, they've added green onions, which I don't
necessarily object to, but it makes me wonder: Is Yoshinoya trying this
to emulate Flame Broiler, which has been gobbling up the teriyaki market
in recent years? My message to them: Stop it! Go back to serving your
chicken bowls as they were. You were the OG of chain teriyaki bowls.
Please stay that way!
Follow Stick a Fork In It on Twitter @ocweeklyfood or on Facebook!
Before becoming an award-winning restaurant critic for OC Weekly in 2007, Edwin Goei went by the alias “elmomonster” on his blog Monster Munching, in which he once wrote a whole review in haiku.