It's 6:45 in the morning,

I'm feeling it.

(dramatic music)

It's Chicken Watch, baby!

It's a special day today.

I'm not on my way to pick up Chris,

I'm actually on my way to pick up Justin Tan.

(dance music)

♪ Chicken watch, chicken watch, chicken watch ♪

Yeah, All right, how you been?

- I'm all right. (laughing)

- [Keith] Oh, God.

(piano glissando)

- Yeah I don't like this,

I just got transferred from the driver's seat,

to the passenger's seat--

- Oh, do you want to switch, should we?

- And now I'm in the back seat?

- Well typically Chris drives. - Well, typically I drive.

- Oh really?

- But now I'm just slowly getting knocked back.

- Well do you want to sit up here?

- [Justin] Yeah.

- Do you want to make Justin sit in the back?

So, last time we had Tokyo fried chicken,

it was incredible.

Oh wow, it's light and crispy.

- [Chris] It's like a potato chip.

- This really feels like a southern meal,

but the flavors are all crazy.

I think it's some of

the best fried chicken I've ever had.

- It gave us some peace,

some peace of mind.

- [Keith] But today, we're going to Lao Tao,

we're doing some Taiwanese spicy popcorn chicken,

and Justin has actually been here before!

- Oh yeah.

- You look very much like a Sith back there.

- Oh, a Sith.

- [Together] Chicken watch!

- Chicken watch.

- [Man] Just got to go by the gym.

- All right and one, two, three.

Hey, who are you and where are we?

- I'm David, I'm the owner of Lao Tao,

and today we're introduce the popcorn chicken.

(funky music)

Basically, it's one of the

most popular street foods in Taiwan.

Every street corner you're gonna

find popcorn chicken everywhere.

- Everywhere makes it?

- Yes.

- It's like hot dogs in New York,

it's like all over the place. - There you go, there you go.

There you go.

- What is the history of the Taiwanese popcorn chicken?

- According to legend-- - Love a good legend.

- Yeah, the owner of the chicken farm,

basically the business was kind of slow,

and there were a lot of chickens left over,

so they basically chopped up a lot of those chickens,

and started selling them as fried popcorn chickens.

- Every part of the buffalo style.

You know? - There you go, there you go.

- And buffalo sometimes, is a word for chicken.

(chuckling)

- [Together] Chicken watch.

(upbeat music)

♪ Everybody look at me ♪

♪ I'm wide awake, I'm ready to eat ♪

♪ And take and take and take ♪

♪ Taking the Chicken that is made for me ♪

♪ Little popcorn kernels, baby, can't you see ♪

♪ I'm gonna throw 'em in the air ♪

♪ And catch 'em in my mouth, swallow the chicken ♪

♪ And it goes down south ♪

♪ Feelin' really good, spicy popcorn ♪

♪ Popcorn chicken from Taiwan ♪

♪ Popcorn chicken from Taiwan ♪

♪ Popcorn chicken from Taiwan ♪

♪ Popcorn chicken from Taiwan ♪

♪ Popcorn chicken from Taiwan ♪

- [Together] Chicken watch!

- All right, this is learning how to cook chicken.

Could you walk us through,

how to make your popcorn chicken sort of step-by-step?

- At the beginning, of course you have to

cut the chicken into little pieces,

then you marinate the chicken,

we have about seven to ten different spices we put in.

Minced garlic. - Wow.

- Minced ginger.

You wanna use shovels or the hands?

- I wanna use shovels!

- There you go.

Oh, yes, shovel that chick.

- But then we add Mijiu,

which is the Taiwanese rice wine.

That's one of the main ingredients.

And there's the star anus.

Oh, I'm sorry. (laughing)

- Star anus, wait. - Star, star anise.

- Anise, anise, anise. - Star anise.

- It does taste like anus on it's own.

- We bread them,

and we kind of powder them.

I just imagine usually we do like,

ten times this amount.

- Right. - Yeah.

- Do you have a bigger sifter? - Right, that's a lot of prep.

- [David] Yeah.

- I grew up with two big sifters,

and they were so mean to me.

Justin, do you wanna lay down a

quick rap about what we're doing here?

- A quick rap?

- Yeah, are you ready for this?

♪ Check it, check it, check it ♪

♪ In this kitchen ♪

♪ Just making some ♪

♪ Chicken ♪

♪ Yeah, Keith and Chris ♪

♪ Giving a little kiss ♪

- Should we? - Give him a little kiss.

- Should we do a kiss?

Okay.

- Well, that was the weirdest thing I've ever heard.

(laughter)

- Well, we haven't done that before.

- That's straight hip-hop, baby.

- Then you fry it.

- No, actually we par fry it, and then we deep fry it.

Once it's fried, then we season it with

popcorn chicken powder, powder, powder.

- Oh, nice hard dust!

Oh, wow, I got a little dust up the nostrils,

but it feels good.

- One of the secret ingredients I use.

I shouldn't be telling you guys,

but we are doing a...

- Secrets....

- Another dish that uses the shitiake mushrooms,

we use the shiitake juice to marinate the chicken.

So you're gonna taste this flavor in the chicken.

- David, shh!

- These are the type of secrets I want!

- [Together] Chicken watch!

- Ow, I just remembered, last time I was here

was the last meal I had with my ex-girlfriend.

(somber music)

♪ Found a picture of you ♪

Then we broke up, a day later.

- [David] Okay.

- This hicken doesn't make people break up.

- I hope not. (laughs)

- Oh we all hope not, David.

- Yeah.

- Are you okay, dude?

- Yeah, it's okay, it just hit me right now.

- I'm sorry to hear that.

- [Justin] Sorry to bring it down.

- Did she just want something less spicy, and you

were delivering like a Taiwanese level of spice?

- I was delivering a Taiwanese level of spice, for sure.

- And she wanted something more mild.

- Yeah.

- All right, well then you don't need her anyway.

- No, exactly.

- You're just gonna trudge through it.

- Yeah, that's right.

- You can let go slowly.

- Yeah, but no, this place brought back those memories.

(laughter)

- [Together] Chicken watch!

(laughter)

- So Justin, we have a rubric,

crispiness, the moisture, the salinity,

which is sort of the seasoning.

- Salinity?

- Yeah, we sort of picked this up.

- What does that word mean?

- It means salt content typically.

- Yeah, that's what I thought.

- The sucrosity, we learned about serenity.

- Serenity?

- Yeah.

- We misheard whatever the other one is,

what's the other one, sal-saltanity?

- We never get it right.

- Satanity.

- Not satanity, salinity.

- [Together] Chickenwatch.

(metal music)

(speaking foreign language)

- All right.

Oh, I love that it's salty.

So we're gonna start actually with the non spicy.

We got to make an extra batch of that anyway,

just so we can taste the flavors a little more.

So, everybody stab a chick.

- [Chris] Oh, my god.

- Probably not the best way to say it.

(chuckles)

(speaking foreign language)

- All right.

(upbeat music)

- It's awesome. - Hmm.

- Like the chew of it is like very delightful,

very crunchy, very salty.

- It's a little french fry-ish to me.

- Mm-hmm, I'm gettin' that umami mushroom taste at the end.

- [Chris] Yeah.

- It's like on my tongue like I ate mushrooms.

- Mm-hmm.

Takes me back to the mother land.

- Have you been? - No.

- I'm of European decent but I've never been to Europe.

No one will invite me there.

- Is this about me? - I was open about it.

- I don't know do you want to make it about you?

(suspenseful music)

- This chicken doesn't make people break up?

- I hope not.

(suspenseful music)

- You know, why don't we try the mild?

This is what they said is the only level we should try.

(laughs)

This will be spicy enough.

- I just touch a little bit with my tongue and I went like,

woo.

- That's plenty of heat.

- That's all you need.

It's a little bit of a hot Cheetos's feeling.

- Uh huh, yeah. - Where you're just like--

- Oh I got to eat more. - Gotta have more.

- Cause if I stop, I'll die.

- The salt level is really nice.

- Yeah. - It's really good salinity.

- Woo, my mouth's getting hot.

Oh, boy.

- This has gotten much less spicy to me

just eating a couple bites.

- Really?

I'm opposite for me.

I'm sweatin'.

- Look we can go to Europe, we can all go to Europe.

(suspenseful music)

- Look at the shape of this guy,

look at him, look a him.

- I mean he warned us that level two is going

to be pretty hot.

- Yeah he said this would be more than enough

and we shouldn't eat this.

(speaking foreign language)

- Oh, yep okay. - Oh, whoa there it is.

There it is, I was like,

"It tastes just like the previous one."

And then now, and now--

- It lasts longer.

- It hits the top and the sides of the tongue.

(coughs) (cheers)

How spicy is this spicy chicken?

- Oh there's a bunch of spices, at least,

like seven to ten different spices go into it.

- Maybe Howlin' Ray's changed my pallet

but that's not crazy spicy.

Do you think you can handle the third level?

- I kind of didn't want to try it and I was going

to let you guys just try it.