Popeye's chicken in Vietnam!

This didn't just happen. They opened a location here about a year ago but we all know what has been going on in the past year so I didn't get around to ordering any of it until recently.

I am happy to report about some of it, disappointed about other aspects of it.

The good news is that the fried chicken has that distinct Popeye's flavor that is ever-so-slightly different from KFC or other brands. For me, I like it when my fried chicken doesn't have a bunch of breading on it and instead just relies on seasoning and having decent pieces of chicken.

Obviously the product that you receive is going to look dramatically different that the advertisements and this is pretty much a global standard.

Nothing terribly impressive looking about that but it was expected. I thought it was really good and the combo price was really low so I didn't have much room to complain. I got a 2-piece with fries and a mandatory Coke that I did not drink and did not want along with a spicy chicken burger for around $6, delivered. So I think this is a pretty good deal even though by Vietnam standards, this is a pretty expensive meal.

One of the flagship items of Popeye's is their spicy chicken sandwich. You may recall that there was a bit of a "war" going on between Popeye's and Chick Fil-A in the states about whose spicy sandwich was better. There was even a story about some customers losing their damn minds when a Popeye's ran out of the special sandwich and the morons that were there though this would be a good time to tear the store apart for the crime of running out of a popular food item.

I was very hopeful that this delicacy was going to be something that was just going to blow my mind and was going to be a game changer. Unfortunately, it was garbage and not at all like its counterpart back state-side. I suppose this is understandable seeing as how we are something like 14,000 miles from Louisiana but this sandwich was just plain bad. It wasn't spicy for one thing, and of course it looked nothing like the advertisements.

All in all I think that I will probably order Popeye's again in the future even though the standard wasn't really all that great. KFC is wildly popular in Asia so I guess it is pretty good to give them some competition. I would really much rather order from a local shop than support a multi-national chain but believe it or not there isn't a single small business in my area that sells fried chicken. This is something I find very strange but perhaps it is specifically because of KFC and Popeye's that this is the case.