J&G Fried Chicken (Robson)

DISCLAIMER: I got a Yelper discount e-coupon for J&G Fried Chicken as an incentive to try the place. I dragged along a couple of friends who live downtown and who happily turned out to have already been curious about it so that between the three of us we could try many things.

The place is tiny. Basically it's a take-out joint, except you probably don't want to take home freshly deep fried food because it'll be horrid by the time you get it home, especially with the current low temperatures.
Seating is minimal, but since people generally walk out with their purchases, you could just eat it right there.

Price-wise there are a couple of meal options but mostly it's snack-sized. So if you try to put together a dinner with the various snacks, it's gonna end badly dollar-wise, just as if you were to try to put together a dinner with just appetizer portions of, well, appetizers.
KFC coupons will probably get you more bang for your buck and comparable tastiness IF you focus on the chicken pieces at KFC -- What J&G does really well is show you the chicken. Their "popcorn chicken" is sized like Chicken McNuggets and uses real chunks of chicken instead of pink paste. When you bite into it, there's no mystery how much chicken there is instead of trying to discern it from the layer of seasoned batter. KFC doesn't have quite the same sort of snacking portion products however, and their "popcorn chicken" snack seems more batter than anything else.

As fried chicken goes, it's juicy and the seasoning is good. But if you demand crispiness, look elsewhere: There's no real crunch to any of it unless you get the deep fried chicken cartilage.



They may ask if you want chili powder on your stuff. I'd go with it on the side until you've had a chance to know what it is. Basically it's chili powder and you do need quite a bit of it to get any real heat going.

The spicy chicken isn't spicy-hot per se. It's spiced but with no heat on the tongue. Also there's a bitterness to the spicing that might not be for everyone.

The custard filled taro balls are worth mentioning for the rather liquid "custard" inside. If you don't pop the whole thing in your mouth, watch out for possible splat.

Overall I felt that taste and value is mediocre. But as snacks go, it's hard to beat deep fried fun.
There are meal options (which we didn't try) as well as some kind of "chicken pizza" (which wasn't available at the time).