Chicken & Rice / Burger: Koreans are Awesome at Everything

The first time I became aware of this restaurant, I thought a mentally stunted gibbon confronted with a laptop typed in the name incorrectly on Yelp.

The first time I drove past this restaurant, I realized the name is actually legitimate, and I was forced to contemplate it deeply.

I’ve arrived at this conclusion: it’s a really, really good name.

You know what you’re getting here. Either chicken and rice, or a burger. Maybe even both. Southern, Eastern, Western- it doesn’t matter. If it can slow your arterial flow, this restaurant will make it. And it will do so at a price point so low you will actually feel ashamed of yourself for making the owners go to so much trouble over your crumpled $5 bill.

Let’s backtrack a bit. Friday night was a low point for me. Realizing I had napped away most of my evening, still recovering from what I’m convinced was a week-long bout of bubonic plague, I wheedled Cam into agreeing that greasy chicken strips would be an excellent idea for dinner. Never having tried their food before, I pitched my best selling point. “Look at that name. LOOK AT IT. Also, it’s owned by Koreans. They’re good at chicken. They’re good at Starcraft. LET’S GO.”

So we drive to this establishment, which is located conveniently at Midway & GBT. It is sandwiched between dubious stores, but radiates warmth with its lime-green walls. The owners have tried painstakingly to make it inviting, with an eclectic mismatch of tables and chairs, a television, and art decor depicting idyllic scenes in Venice. They have labeled drinks and menus carefully. As the immigrant daughter of Asians who have toiled in food service, it legitimately makes my heart hurt to think about all the love and hard work that has been poured into this neon green little space.

We order to-go so that we can eat most disgustingly in the privacy of our apartment. The place is run by two adorable Koreans who kind of look like my parents. There is a distinct language barrier, but they were so welcoming and eager to take our order that it’s hard to find fault. As soon as we walked in, the lady practically showered us with menus (I was reminded forcibly of Teppo’s recent failings), shoving them happily at us like the Asian Gambit of food service. The menu is replete with a variety of items that make you go, “dafuq.” Nearly everything is some degree of deep fried. There’s a wide gamut of typical American Chinese food that was most likely inherited from the previous restaurant, plus a few Korean bulgogi dishes that seem like a safer bet. Predictably, we order chicken strips, fried rice, and fries. We obviously do not care about our lives.

To be fair, it took a while to receive our food. The chicken strips are hand-breaded and fried to order, and they had three orders to fill before ours. I contented myself with taking some terrible photos, and then was admonished by a distinguished gentleman: “I ain’t trying to be in nobody’s camera. I got four baby mommas and I don’t need them knowing what state I’m in, know what I’m sayin’? I can’t be in nobody’s camera.” It’s good to know parental responsibility is alive and well in Carrollton, Texas. God bless you, sketchy chicken-eating man.

Ultimately, though, you don’t eat at Chicken & Rice / Burger for its upper-class clientele. You come here for the chicken strips. And they are wonderful.

Look at dat beautiful chicken. Before I’ve tucked away my camera, Cam is already making obscene moaning noises about how delicious the chicken strips are. I think maybe it’s hyperbole, because our expectations were not incredibly high. I harbor the misconception that it’ll either have the cardboard dryness of Whataburger chicken strips, or else be miserably soggy from the overlong wait. I am wrong. I am as wrong as our group at Teppo was for thinking we could receive adequate service. I am as wrong as that dude who’s dodging his child support to 4 women.

The chicken strips are a masterpiece of crunchy breading (not overly breaded, not even remotely dry), tender chicken, and a spicy seasoning that makes me fervently mentally compose love sonnets to both South and Best Korea for generating the man who cooked our food. The strips are much larger than we expected, but we defeat them enthusiastically. The fried rice was forgettable, the fries were good (although slightly lacking salt). But the chicken is ultimately the selling point. Delicious sorcery in my mouth.

Unfortunately, I don’t think we can frequent the place as often as I would like- chicken strips are not a low-carb food and we’d like to stave off obesity until middle-age at least. But I’m effusively reviewing Chicken & Rice / Burger in the hopes that it will receive the influx of customers it deserves. The next time you crave chicken strips and opt for fast food instead of this little restaurant, you have made a terrible, terrible decision. And I hate you.

Teppo: A Place for Friends

Photo by Lara Solt / Dallas News

Look at this photo. Look at all these pleased customers basking in the glow of their happy yakitori chef, people who have obviously received menus and drinks and the basic level of service that restaurants are expected to provide.

This photo represents approximately 0% of our recent experience at Teppo.

Here are some wonderful things I’ve learned about one of the most revered sushi joints in Dallas:

1. They don’t take reservations in the evening. Not even for their New Year’s Day menu. And when you tell them you’ll be coming with a party of 10 at 8 PM, they discard this information immediately and make absolutely no accommodations for a large group. Because fuck you plebs coming from all corners of Dallas to drop unwise sums of money on sushi, this restaurant is only for parties of 2 with infinite patience for terrible service.

2. They don’t seat you until you chase down a waitress and beg desperately. There is no hostess ready to welcome you, only a pair of waitresses that are so relentlessly focused on avoiding eye contact with the entryway that it’s as if they have draped an Invisibility Cloak across the door. It doesn’t matter that eight of us are standing awkwardly at the entrance, being stared at by the dining patrons. You don’t get a seat unless you wait 20 minutes, lose patience, and finally demand one, you bitches.

3. They don’t want to provide any service whatsoever until your entire party has arrived. Two dickbags in our group ran late, which caused our waitress to bregrudgingly allow us to occupy the empty 8-top, all the while anxiously avoiding our party as if we had threatened to collectively defecate on the table. Certainly no menus, water, or semblance of basic acknowledgement could be wasted upon the largest party in their restaurant.

4. They absolutely will not allow 10 people to sit at an 8-top. Chief among our group were slender women and a girl so tiny and adorable she only occupied about 1 square foot of space. We could have easily sat close and accommodated our entire party. But the waitress at Teppo felt it was a much better idea to inform us we won’t be served unless we figured out a way to segregate our group. Needless to say, we banished the latecomers to the bar. But having to vote members of our party off the island during what was supposed to be gregarious group dinner felt like a sad victory (watching the two men trudge awkwardly across the restaurant, looking as though they were on the worst date of their life, was a tearjerking experience).

5. They will only give you a menu when asked for the fifteenth time, and you eight dicks better share one menu because we don’t have anymore for you go away already. On a positive note, the one menu we uncomfortable craned our necks for shared viewing looked pretty good.

6. They don’t bring you water. Or ask you what you want to drink. Or ever return to your table.

7. They don’t split checks. Even for a party of eight, with easily separable tickets. They absolutely cannot, will not, are either not technologically or mentally capable of creating separate tickets for one table. Okay, let’s all order on a single ticket and itemize the bills at the end of the dinner. NOPE NOPE NOPE. Teppo doesn’t stoop to calculating who ordered what and how much it’ll cost each individual. Teppo doesn’t even allow you to make the calculations yourself and run credit cards for carefully outlined, disparate amounts. Teppo believes strongly that one person should pay the bill for the whole party, and then figure out how much you owe each other on your own damn time, assholes. Because Teppo is all about making it easier for large parties.

8. They don’t give a single fuck. Faced with the prospect of having to order either the exact same food or painstakingly calculating equitable dining costs for each person, it began to dawn on us that this was not a restaurant who wanted or cared about our patronage. They looked at our party of 10 and saw a nuisance that could be discarded with extreme avoidance and lack of helpfulness. I can’t even play the race card here. It was simply a relentless, terminal case of No Fucks Given.

So we walked out. I don’t think I’ve ever walked out of a restaurant previous to Teppo in my life. I don’t even walk out of movies (not even Sex and the City 2, and that trainwreck made me want to forcibly remove my eyes from my skull with a rusty melon baller).

Teppo, I really want to try your food. But your bitch face was fierce.