Tasty fried chicken variations available in Long Beach area
Fried chicken is as American as apple pie.
I mean, the Colonel gave us KFC, right? He was born in Henryville, Indiana, and died in Louisville, Kentucky — hard to get more American than that! But look around the Long Beach area and you'll find lots of fried chicken from lands far away.
We don't yet have a branch of the Filipino fried chicken powerhouse called Jollibee, which has more than 1,200 branches around the world; the nearest Jollibees are in Torrance and Carson.
But we do have a new outlet of the even bigger Korean chain, Mom's Touch, which has more than 1,300 branches in South Korea alone! Our Mom's Touch is at 6191 Atlantic Ave. (562-908-9222, www.momstouchusa. com). Mom's Touch takes great pride in serving chicken parts that are “fresh… never frozen” — though, frankly, with the chicken deep-fried in a thick crust and layered with sauce, it's doubtful that makes much of a difference.
There are sundry chicken preps served at Mom's, beginning with the sandwiches, three of them. There's Mom's Original, which comes on a “buttery brioche bun,” layered with lettuce, onion slices, pickle slices and lots of the “special sauce,” which seems more like a thick salad dressing than a chicken sauce. There's also the Creamy Garlic, and the Fuego with a “special pepper sauce.” The basic chicken is dark meat, with white meat costing 50 cents more.
But for me, like I said, what's really notable is the crust — which is thick, and stays crisp, even during a drive home. Heck, I put half a sandwich in the fridge, and the crust was still thick
and crispy the next morning.
There are chicken wings as well — Mom's Original, Cheese Onion, Sweet Chili, Hot Apple Zing and Fuego. There are chicken fingers, with any two of five sauces. There are french fries, coleslaw, mashed spuds and creamed corn. And as with Jollibee, which doesn't seem especially Filipino, Mom's doesn't seem very Korean. But over there, it's everywhere. Everyone