Richeese Factory in One Utama
[Muslim-friendly] If you’re looking for the juiciest and crispiest fried chicken in KL – this ain’t it! A quick-service restaurant chain that originated in Indonesia, Richeese Factory recently landed in Malaysia with its first outlet in One Utama.
The fast food chain seems to take takes inspiration from both Indonesian and Korean-style fried chicken, except for what makes them great!
The chicken pieces were not as tender and juicy as the Korean ones, nor does it feature spices as nuanced as the Indonesian counterparts.
The result is a pretty uninspiring and dry fried chicken that is just not worth the calories.
Richeese Factory from Indonesia
Originating from Indonesia, Richeese Factory opened its first outlet in One Utama in Feb this year.
This fast food chain is known for its Fire Chicken – which is fried chicken coated in thick sweet-spicy sauce (ala Korean style) served with a cheese dip.
This product apparently went “viral” on social media as customers are able to choose five different levels of spiciness for the chicken.
Aside from Fire Chicken, Richeese also serves interesting products such as whole fried chicken, and Mac n Cheese ice cream.
Richeese Factory’s “viral” Fire Chicken
We don’t usually try viral food products, but since we were in One Utama and we love fried chicken – we thought we’d check it out.
Just like any fast food joint, the Fire Chicken can be ordered as a combo or ala-carte.
We opted for the Combo 2 set for RM20.49 – which comes with two pieces of Fire Chicken, mashed potato, coleslaw, a drink, and the cheese dip.
A whole lotta spice and nothing else
We decided to try the Fire Chicken in two different spicy levels – 1 which denotes “medium” and 3 that’s called “X-tra Hot”.
Similar to Korean-style Fried Chicken – the chicken pieces are first coated in batter and deep-fried, before they are tossed with the thick sauce.
We found the Fire Chicken’s medium sauce to be cloyingly sweet with a tolerable heat that’s suitable for most palates. However, it was pretty one-dimensional with an artificial BBQ flavour undertone.
The “X-tra Hot” level has a real spicy kick to it – but again, all we could taste was just sweetness and a very numbing spicy end.
Sadly, underneath all the thick sauce – the fried chicken was just dry, hard and uninspiring.
The accompanying signature cheese sauce is also pretty dull – as it just tasted like artificial cheese flavour.
How about the sides?
The sides were pretty uninspiring too, in our opinion.
The Mashed Potato has an unattractive jaundice colour, and tasted like instant mashed potato in a box without the KFC nostalgia.
The Coleslaw is just passable – and generic-tasting at best.
We’ve tried both the optional drinks that come with the set.
The Pink Lava is essential sirap bandung – but with the sweetness level dialled up to 11.
I supposed the sweetness is necessary to counter the intense heat of the spicy chicken.
The Frutarian is a type of fruit tea, which we prefer to the Pink Lava at least it had a hint of natural fruit taste.
Fire Chicken is decent
We also tried the non-spicy version of the Fire Flying Chicken.
This was passable as the chicken was served warm. It was also tender and juicy – but erred slightly on the saltier side like it’s been brined for too long in stock.
Mac n Cheese Ice-Cream
Surprisingly, the Mac n Cheese Ice-Cream Cone (RM1.50) was not as off-putting as it sounds.
The mac n cheese flavour was actually quite mild, with a decent sweetness that somehow made it palatable.
Summary
All in, we think there are better options if you’re craving good fried chicken.
Good Korean fried chicken restaurants such as BHC and Kyochon come to mind if you’re looking for juicy and crispy fried chicken, while Hot Bird far supersedes Richeese in terms of freshness and crunchiness while offering the same type of spicy-tier system.
We would also rather eat ayam penyet or ayam gepuk for something truly Indonesian, or Tiga Budak Gemok’s ayam kicap sambal which offers some nuances amid the spiciness.
And nothing beats our favourite fried chicken at Table & Apron.
Our advice: If you haven’t tried Richeese, kindly skip this.
Richeese Factory
Address: LG356, Rainforest, 1 Utama Shopping Centre, Central Park Avenue, Bandar Utama, 47800 Petaling Jaya, Selangor
Hours: 10am-10pm Daily
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