New food addiction: cheese-powder fried chicken

LOS ANGELES -- I'm not sure what led me to seek out fried chicken wings covered in cheese powder. Maybe it's that my penchant for fried poultry reached so extreme a level that I needed to find the next dimension of chicken. Or, it was the universe. Multiple new Korean fried chicken chains in my immediate vicinity have started pushing cheese-dusted chicken. However it happened, I'm hooked.

I was first introduced to cheese chicken at a spot called bb.q Chicken, a fast-growing chain of chicken shops that started in Seoul, South Korea, in 1995. There are more than 3,500 locations in 57 countries, including more than 50 restaurants in California.

Cheesling chicken at bb.q Chicken

The company is so serious about fried chicken that it established Chicken University, an educational compound in Gyeonggi-do, South Korea, where new franchise shop managers and employees spend two weeks learning recipes and marketing. There are even plans to turn the school into an actual educational center and theme park open to the public.

The restaurant's cheesling chicken is coated in a stark white powder made from a mixture of mascarpone and cheddar cheeses. It clings to the surface of the chicken, filling in every nook and groove. There's typically a small pile of excess seasoning in a corner of the serving basket.

The cheddar hits first, then the mascarpone, imparting a sweet, buttery richness to the chicken.

The amount of powder and color may vary depending on the location, and how long your chicken sits before you eat it. After 10 minutes in the car, the powder darkens in color, transforming into a pale yellow paste. Regardless of the color and texture, it has that same sweet cheese flavor that reminds me of those dual tubs of cheddar and caramel popcorn.

Though you can order the cheesling on a whole fried chicken and bone-in wings, I prefer the boneless, for maximum crevices to trap the powder.

Bburinkle chicken at BHC

Bburinkle, a powder that incorporates cheddar, blue cheese, onion and garlic, is the bestselling flavor at the BHC at the Original Farmers Market, the first U.S. location for the Seoul-based chicken chain.

"It's the bestselling flavor by far," says restaurant manager Bobby Shearer. "We went through a period where we had a shortage and it made customers really upset. It's really the main thing people ask for."

The powder gives the chicken a golden hue, with flecks of green parsley throughout. The dominant flavor is savory cheddar, with the slight funk of blue cheese and a zesty kick of onion. It's a combination that taps into the same serotonin receptors that used to fire on overdrive when 12-year-old me crushed a bag of sour cream and onion chips and a Squirt on the school yard: equal parts aggressively seasoned and addictive.

The sheer amount of powder used to coat the chicken may seem excessive, but Shearer says that's the idea.

"We make sure it's very finely coated and then after we finish tossing it in a bowl, we look for any spots that haven't gotten cheese powder and then we will sprinkle more on," he says.

I appreciate the diligence.

While cheese chicken now can be found at Korean chicken shops all over the world, BHC was an early adopter of cheese powder-coated chicken. In 2013, employees at the company's research and development center in South Korea were tasked with developing new items based on consumer analysis from popular restaurants.

"The research revealed that 'cheese' had become a 'taste code' among consumers in their teens and twenties," wrote a marketing representative for the company in an email. "Inspired by this, they began developing new menu items that combined cheese and chicken."

The restaurant launched Bburinkle chicken in November 2014. Within two weeks, the flavor accounted for 25% of the brand's total sales. It sold 6.6 million orders in the first year.

At the Fairfax location, Shearer says people request to buy "tubs" of the seasoning. While that's not an option at the moment, you can ask for a side of the powder to sprinkle on everything you order.

Cheese and garlic chicken at Louders

This perennially busy restaurant in Koreatown has some of the most inventive chicken flavors in all of Los Angeles. Wings covered in shishito peppers and baby anchovies and "honey nutty butter" are available options.

Instead of a cheese powder, the Louders cheese and garlic chicken is a sort of garlic Parmesan/mozzarella stick hybrid. Each bone-in wing is blanketed in both Parmesan and melted mozzarella cheese and littered with chopped garlic and green onion. Chicken wings reimagined as cheesy garlic bread.