Apologies for the delay between posts. This is partly attributable to my going on holidays over Easter, and partly attributable to the psychological burden I naively placed myself under last time by promising that I would write about a particular subject. Previously I have been at liberty to write about whatever takes my fancy from from week to week. This week, however, I have been labouring in vain to capture in mere words the sheer disappointment of my visit to KFC Hong Kong.
Last week I noted that McDonalds is pretty much the same in Australia and Hong Kong, apart from a few localised menu items and the inexplicable ability to have your freaking wedding there. One presumes that there is someone at McDonalds HQ whose job it is to ensure a degree of uniformity across McDonalds' international operations, so as not to disorient Americans who somehow find themselves travelling overseas. I can only hope there is no such person at KFC, because if there is, then that person is massively incompetent.
Now I am not exactly a regular at KFC in Australia. The whole idea of KFC seems to be taking chicken, which is a pretty healthy food when roasted or braised, and seeing how deadly they can make it by coating it in batter and deep frying it. While hamburgers are pretty unhealthy too, beef is basically full of fat to begin with; at least they're not covering it in chocolate or something to make it even worse for you.
I don't really go for the idea of eating deep-fried chicken pieces, mainly because they leave a greasy residue on your fingers afterwards which reminds you of what you've done. I prefer their burgers, which by keeping your fingers clean allow you to mentally disavow ever having eaten fast food and move on. Everybody knows, however, that KFC Australia's main redeeming feature is the chips. Proper chips, of decent thickness, loaded with chicken flavoured salt, in a little red box. Sure, they're not as good as the ones at the fish and chip shop, but you can get them at the drive-through, which is another factor which facilitates disavowal.
So imagine my surprise when I discovered that KFC Hong Kong does not sell chips. No french fries either. Why? Why would that be the item you exclude from your localised menu? Have sliced deep fried potatoes not yet proved that they are more than a passing Western fad in Hong Kong, like ugg boots or cognac?
What KFC instead serves up in Hong Kong is a series of side order-based insults to someone who was expecting chips. There is rice with sauteed mushrooms or a sort of chicken casserole on top. These are not salty or deep fried and are therefore scarcely an alternative. There is corn on the cob, which okay, goes with fried chicken but in addition to chips, not instead of. There is KFC's venerable reconstituted potato and gravy. Right, so you imported *that* idea across borders but not chips? That just makes things worse.
What KFC offers in lieu of chips is a bizarre waffle-shaped abomination it laughably calls the "crisscut fry". I have so many problems with this. Firstly, "crisscut" is not a word. Secondly, calling it a "fry" conjures up images of the fries other fast food places serve, which are thin and long and moreish. The KFC crisscut fry is a fat slab of latticed potato which takes several mouthfuls to eat. Because it is so big, you only get about four to a medium serve, so the act of stealing a chip from your dining partner ceases to be a laughing matter. Thirdly, at least when I visited, the crisscut fries were so thoroughly deep-fried that I am taking it on trust that they were once potato.
There is of course a range of other oddities, although everything else seems trifling next to the absence of chips. There are only two burgers on the menu, one of which features thousand island dressing - Hongkongers love thousand island dressing on pizza too, incidentally - and the other "savoury cheese sauce". The adjective "savoury" implies something is added to the cheese but wisely gives no clues.
So there you have it. Cultural relativism is all very well, but I have learnt is that it isn't much help when you just want a caramel sundae and some proper chips. All I can hope is that somewhere in Australia there's a Hongkonger on holiday staring up at a fast-food restaurant menu and wondering where the hell he is going to get a prawn burger, a medium mushroom rice, a taro shake and a wedding for under $500.
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