American fried chicken is facing an unusual challenger: a grinning red bee from the Philippines. Jollibee, long a fixture in its home country, is rapidly expanding in the US with a menu that looks familiar but tastes noticeably different, writes Yamin Tayag for the Atlantic. Its flagship Chickenjoy—fried chicken seasoned with garlic, citrus, and "something salty and fermented"—delivers a "blast of umami" that might surprise Americans used to mild flavors. Eater, for one, ranks it as the best fast-food fried chicken in the US. Other offerings are similarly off-center from the American norm: sweet-style spaghetti with hot-dog slices, pineapple-topped burgers, and ube- (a purple yam) and mango-filled hand pies.
The chain, which is everywhere in the Philippines and outperforms even McDonald's there, currently has 80 American locations, but the number is growing fast. It's essentially a reversal of the usual fast-food flow. After US troops brought burgers and fried chicken to the Philippines in the early 20th century, local entrepreneurs, including Jollibee founder Tony Tan Caktiong, adapted those dishes to what executives call the Filipino taste for "maximum" flavor. Now, the chain is serving those dishes back. In the US, Jollibee first followed Filipino immigrant communities, then widened its aim as non-Filipino customers embraced its chicken.
Jollibee's leaders hope to open 500 North American stores by decade's end, relatively modest numbers that will nonetheless help the chain in "reshaping the American palate, much as the US reshaped the Filipino palate a century ago," writes Tayag. "On that front, it has one major advantage. For all of Jollibee's weirdness, it isn't entirely foreign. Because it is Filipino, it is also American." Read the full story.
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