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| - I was eager to try Cheers as my Korean food-loving friends dined there 3 times in the span of a week. The space was big enough to readily accommodate our group of 10 people. And they're open very late!
We ordered the original ddukbokki (ricecakes) with cheese which was spicy, cheesy, saucy, and full of rice cake pieces and buckwheat noodles. Any leftover sauce can be used as a dipping sauce for chicken, fries or onion rings. I really enjoyed the chewy texture of the rice cakes but due to my low threshold for spice, I could only manage a couple of pieces. The cheese corn we ordered helped cut the spiciness of the ddokbokki but it was not as cheesy as I had imagined.
Cheers' main draw however is definitely their chicken. They offer bone-in chicken, drumsticks and wings, and boneless chicken bites. We ordered their boneless chicken bites with the garlic soy flavoured sauce (which had lots of pieces of sliced fried garlic in it) that are deliciously juicy and yet crispy with an almost caramelized consistency. The addition of fried rice cakes to our orders of chicken added another satisfying textural dimension.
Our orders of chicken came with several types of banchan (side dishes), like pickled radish, cabbage slaw, and a creamy spicy penne pasta. Orders of chicken can be purchased as a combo with Sapporo, beer, or soju. I don't tend to drink alcohol much but the green grape and grapefruit flavoured sojus were sweet, refreshing and dangerously tasty. The grape soju was like drinking a spiked grape juice and the grapefruit soju reminded me of the taste of gin and tonic.
For years I've been disappointed with other KFC (Korean fried chicken) places in Toronto that served chicken that fell disappointingly short of the crispy double-fried, caramelized wings I had had at famous Korean chicken wings places in NYC. Finally I have found a go-to Korean chicken place in Toronto to satisfy my cravings!
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