I Tried Every Fast Food in China

China has their own version of everything. No YouTube, they have Bilibili. No iMessage. Instead, they have WeChat. So, what else does that apply to? What about all the fast food joints that we know and love? Is it the same story? So, today I'm in China trying every Chinese fast food chain that I can. And we're going to be comparing the ones back home to the ones that they have here. And on top of that, going to Chinese-only fast food chains that you can only find here, to find out which one is the best. But surprisingly, we're starting things off at KFC in Chongqing, China. I didn't think they'd have it to be honest with you, but it turns out it is the most popular fast food place in all of China. Tasting with me today is Jackson, a Chongqing native and tour guide, who's taking me through China's most popular fast food chains nationwide. So, we're here to set a baseline to see how it differs from KFC in America. And after this spot, we'll be hopping to McDonald's for the same thing. This box contains wings, nuggets, which look a lot like McDonald's nuggets, and then the classic fried chicken. Maybe we start with the wings. We call it the New Orleans style. It's cooked nicely. It's tender. Flavor is not bad. It's a little sweet. I'm jumping onto the nugget. Honestly, I kind of like this, but it's a little dry. It's like paper. McDonald's had it better. That's true. On to the KFC fried chicken. I will say this looks concerning. KFC to me is really not great in America, but is it better in China? I don't know if it's just me, but it tastes totally different. The seasoning is way more intense. Way saltier, way more umami. Chicken's fattier. Overall, the flavor is actually surprisingly better, but it is dry and it's honestly missing a lot of the breading, which is crucial for fried chicken to me. We're not done. We have to try the Chinese exclusive items to make our final determination. Now, we have a Beijing style fried chicken wrap. It looks boring from the outside, I'll be honest, but when I opened it up and I saw what was going on in here with the pickles and everything else, I knew it was going to be good. I'm going to fold it and bite it from the middle cause that's where all the sauce is. Excuse the way I ate this, but uh cheers. So, it's actually extremely similar to how the Peking duck is actually wrapped. They have the Peking duck sauce, salty, and they have the cucumber, crispy and crunchy. The flavor of this is actually phenomenal. I would love if they served this in America. That Peking duck sauce, a little bit sweet, a little bit spicy. There's also a creamy sauce in there, too. I don't know what that is. And the crunch from those cucumbers, and it adds a little freshness. It's so funny cause it's literally just a tortilla and chicken tender, but like because of the sauce and the cucumber, it becomes something different entirely. That's kicking them up a notch. We got one more thing. Portuguese egg tarts. I have no notes on that. That's great. It's not too sweet. Great flavor. Super, super silky egg tart texture. And then the crust is like this nice crunchy almost puff pastry. It's nice. Is it the best egg tart I've ever had? No. Is it a quality one? Actually, surprisingly pretty good. We're rating things on a scale of 1 to 10. 10 being an absolute greatest thing I've ever eaten in my life, period. And a one being I need psychiatric help afterwards. And the way that we're going to be judging that is value, speed, and flavor. Those are all the things that matter with fast food, right? It took a very long time to get this. 15 minutes, so not very fast. Price-wise, it was actually shockingly cheap. Like $19 for all this food, and there's a few things we didn't even show. Values there. Flavor-wise, there were some hits, there were some misses. I think it's deserving of a 6.8. 6.8 is a fair judgment. But this is just the beginning. It only gets crazier from here. Moving on, we have the world's largest fast food chain under Asia's largest LED screen. It's McDonald's. And they have a lot more options here. How does the world's largest fast food chain in China compared to the McDonald's in America? Judging by the looks of this sandwich, I'm going to say pretty different cause the fry on the chicken looks good. The breading looks amazing. Let's taste it. Watch out. Watch out. Is that good? Emotionally, this is my 10 out of 10. When I travel to other remote regions in China, I'm not used to their local food because every region is so distinctly different. McDonald's, that's my safe paradise. It's surprisingly good. It really is. First thing I noticed is there's some spiciness to it. And it's actually spicy, but not like crazy. I don't think that they would ever do that in America cause they're afraid of scaring away audience. But I love that there's actual heat in this for once. It's crispy. It's a little chewy and stringy, but the flavor in and of itself is nice. The chicken's seasoned well. It doesn't taste of dirty oil and it's decently spiced. We have other things to taste though. We got just the standard fries. It's the classic McDonald's way. They taste the same everywhere on Earth, but they don't have the same options of fries everywhere on Earth. We have the crispy fries, which are another version. They actually are so crispy. Crunchy. Yeah, I love it. Texture is really important to me on French fries. The seasoning is better. The crunch is better. McDonald's, if you're watching, you should be launching this in America. It would do so well. Why can't you guys have nice things? Now, we have the Angus Max burger served incredibly preciously in this box. Almost like a little gift wrap hamburger. Also, the maillard on this is absolutely bonkers. It's seared properly, but the question is, is the beef any good? It's kind of flavorless. It's a little bit plain. The bacon is so much of the primary flavor of this that it almost kind of tastes like OG McDonald's breakfast when I was a kid. From an American's palette, it doesn't taste like a hamburger to me. It doesn't taste bad. This one isn't my favorite item, but we have more. The final item, you have the taro pie. This was the one thing I always love from McDonald's was the fried pies. Well, I'm glad that you were able to experience your childhood again. It's a beautiful thing. Cheers. Oh, yeah. The texture of this is absolutely perfect. The crunch, it melts in your mouth. It's so tender, but the flavor is kind of a little bit lacking for me. You guys really like to keep your desserts not too sweet. I think American standard of sugar is like a next level to us. The texture is a 10 out of 10. Unbelievable crunch. We had a lot of different things. It's time to rate. It took about 10 minutes to get all of our food, but we had a huge order. I think it would have taken half the amount of time if it wasn't as big. Overall though, it is a bit long for fast food. That said, let's talk about value. We spent this much. A little bit expensive for China, especially fast food. Yeah, I would say some of the items were mind-blowing and some of them were kind of so so they also had a matcha avocado that we had off camera that was insane. For a McDonald's, I think I'm going to give it a seven. I don't know that I've ever given McDonald's anything above like a two. I think I'm going to give it a very solid seven as well. That's just my go-to comfort food, especially the crispy chicken sandwich. That's just my all-time favorite. And so McDonald's joins the leaderboard, but we have a long road ahead of us on our journey to find the best fast food in China. On to the next. Next up, Jackson is taking us to a mom and pop noodle chain called Jyu Ywen to show us what fast food was like before the big chains arrived and honestly what it is still for many people across China to this day. We're on to what arguably gave birth to modern Chinese fast food outside of American brands. Would you agree with that? Yeah, pretty much. Because uh the Chongqing small noodles, it went nationwide since 10 years ago. The small doesn't mean it's like small by its size, but its simplicity and efficiency. One of their specialty is the tajang. They add ground pork and chili oil and blend it with the noodle giving that extra soft and meaty texture. And I'm gonna get myself a regular ones like vegetarian one. So you could try out the difference. What about spice level? Just regular. Tell her I know that I'm white, but I can handle it. You give your order to the chef and they go to work. She boiled every noodle to order. And 4 minutes later, they were placed into a prepared bowl containing a wide assortment of ingredients. Pickled vegetables, green onions, chili oil, and a fat scoop of lard. Honestly, everything was already set up like an assembly line, very similar to fast food. Another chef layered on pork, and a little broth, and we were ready to taste. Total cost for two bowls. You see the size of this in USD? $3.51 for both combined. Less than 5 minutes. That is the very OG definition of fast food for the Chinese people. That ising delicious. About 20 years ago, when I was in grade two, this was my staple dish, hopping on a school bus. When I was really, really late, the auntie can usually get it done really fast as well. I would tell her, you know, my bus is right there. And then she's like, "Oh, yeah." She would sometimes like prioritize it, you know? No, it's very nice of you. And at the time, it was only 5. That's like a little bit like.7. I can't believe that you're getting high quality restaurant level flavor for like a little under $2. It's absurd. There's so much flavor in this for something that was made in 4 minutes. The noodles are cooked perfectly. They've got a nice springiness to it, a nice chew. I love the Sichuan, the little bit of numbing spice that's in there, and the flavor of pork is just like boom. It's so meaty and porky and delicious and flavorful. Wow. I can't stop. Yeah, this is an addicting level of noodle and spice. I can't believe it. The value is beyond perfection. It's It's god level. Flavor. Unbelievable. It's delicious. It's good. It's hearty. Took less than 5 minutes, 4 minutes, and 30 seconds. We've waited in drive-throughs for 15 minutes before. Man, I I think I'm going to have to give it a nine. I don't know if anything can beat this. Thank you. You make me proud. I think I'll give it a 9.1. This was my childhood. Jyu Ywen takes a commanding lead. This is going to be very hard to beat. But a heavyhitting china-born burger chain is next. So, we're at the first franchise nationwide Chinese fast food place, Tastien. Apparently, they are the inventor of Chinese style burger. What they do is they make Chinese style handmade buns and they add black sesame to make a difference rather than the usual white sesame burgers or sandwiches that we usually see in the West. So, we went in and placed our order, got a couple items and ended up waiting a little too long. 11 minutes for fast food. A little bit long, but if it's good, it may be acceptable. This is their new Xinjiang style chili pepper with chicken patty that's coated with rice. The bun itself is interesting. I don't know how to describe it. It almost feels like powo in a way. It's like stretchy, chewy, airrated. It looks nice. The bun is a handmade bun mixed with the key flavors of China. Sour, sweet, salt, bitter, and spicy. Very unique. Never seen this before. Flavor-wise, totally unique. The sweetness actually makes sense here because it has more spice and more just like richness from the chilies on top. It doesn't taste like artificial flavoring. I'm tasting the chilies. I'm tasting the creamy mayo. I do think it's missing a little bit of salt if I wanted to be really anal about it, but like other than that, it's a good sandwich. You could serve this at a restaurant. People would probably be happy. This is better than I expected. The crunchiness with that crispy rice is killing it. And the spicy level. It looks kind of intimidating, but it's actually pretty okay just cause we have it. And I'm surprised that they sell it. They sell chicken wings. So, I'm going to try one. Crispy fried properly chickeny. Missing salt though. Let's break this down. Speed is very, very low. A noodle shop putting out traditional noodles was way faster than this. So, for a combo meal, drink side and the sandwich, $2.50. So, value in comparison to what we would pay for in America is actually quite good. But in comparison to the noodles, the value isn't as good. I think I'll give it a very strong seven, which for me is a high rating out of all the Chinese burgers. I'd give it a 6.8 because my personal favorite is still McDonald's chicken burger, but that is only sold in China. Still a good rating, but it's not our best one, and we have many more to try. So, let's move on. Next up, Domino's Pizza. This is a big deal here. They have China exclusive menu items that we've never seen before. Domino's in America, I've never been a huge fan of it. Actually, I'm not a huge fan of it. But Domino's in China is extremely different. In fact, they have a huge menu, like ridiculously big. Durian pizza. We're from a different universe. They have steak and lamb chops and salmon. Look at all these sides. Meatballs, golden shrimp, pork jowl, onion rings. You can get a volcano pizza with a yakator skewer and a side of potatoes with two milkshakes. But we only got two of them. We got the beef Wellington. What the hell? And then we got this, which is what we're starting with. The shrimp and pineapple pizza. If you thought pineapple didn't belong on pizza, how about fried shrimp, boiled shrimp, mayo? I'm scared. That is horrendous. It's very different. I'm so confused right now. You have a pizza crust that's the same as usual. The sauce is a sweet, creamy pineapple custard with cheese melted on top. I'll be honest, it doesn't taste as bad as I thought. It is so far away from what I was expecting. Like, my brain is confused. To put it in English, I don't know if it's actually pizza. That made me speak Chinese. I think we're going to have to jump to the Wellington cause I don't know how I feel about that. This one looks a bit more savory. This looks different. Maybe more in the direction of what we're looking for. Let's give it a shot. Wow, it's actually good. Comparatively, it is better. I'm surprised. There's real puff pastry on it, which is cool. There's real bacon underneath it. Like whole lardons of smoky, streaky bacon, which adds good flavor. It's a bit unusual. It has like a almost a French onion soup flavor, which I guess is supposed to be the mushroom ductel like in a classic Wellington. Surprisingly, this was the most expensive item we've gotten by far. It was close to the same price as it is in America. It doesn't taste that much better, but it is more different and more exciting. It also took 20 minutes. And I'll give it a six. I'll give it a seven. I don't think I'll try it again, but I just appreciate the creativity of Asian culinary culture. Now, I don't even know what to expect anymore. Let's go on to the next. Next up, another China exclusive chain trying to battle it out with one of the global giants. We are at Dico's, a KFC competitor from the early 2000s. They exist mostly in transportation hubs, specifically railway stations. They have fried chicken, burgers, and French fries. I'm going for the fries first. All right. The fries are not bad, although they should be crispier, but they taste good, though. So, normally they have a western style fried chicken sandwich, but this particular one is their new seasonal signature, which the bun is entirely made of rice. The crispy rice on the surface and the second half is a slightly more soft, chewy rice. It's not crispy at all. It tastes really good though. The beef is insanely good. The rice isn't cooked perfectly, but it's cooked kind of nicely for a fast food place. I would have expected it to be total mush. It has some chew to it. The American cheese in there goes well with it. What I'm surprised about is the flavor of the beef. Almost has like a Burger King beefy flavor, but like better. There's got to be MSG in it. It almost tastes like fast food patties used to taste like 10 or 15 years ago. In a good way. Okay, now for the leg quarter. I call this a leg quarter, but what do you call it? They call it the pistol chicken quarter. The good old pistol shape. This has got to be American's favorite. If I compare this to KFC in America, crispiness way better, but I don't think it's seasoned as well. This is like kind of sweet. I kind of want more saltiness. I would say it's still better than KFC in America. Yeah, it's at least juicy enough. I prefer this over the burger slightly. It took 13 minutes at the end of the day, so convenience is like at the floor. For all this, we spent almost $9, so it's one of the most expensive. It took the longest, and I definitely would not say it's the best. I think I'm going to give it like a 6.5 for me. I'll get a 6.5 as well. Still a higher rating than I've given KFC in the US. Moving on. I know we're only doing fast food, but we had to make a quick stop here for an iconic place in China. It's a direct competitor with a major one in America. Luckin Coffee. We have Luckin Coffee on this side, but then directly across is a Starbucks. The funny thing is, I've seen this happen maybe two or three times since arriving in Chongqing. It's almost like every time Starbucks lays down a new shop, Luckin steps in to go, "You know what? We're going to battle it out. We're going to snipe you right in your face." Maybe. Yes. From a business sense, they have all the same things that Starbucks has, but they also have unique items that Starbucks does not have, like this. This is one of their iconic orange Americano. So, it's got orange juice and an Americano resting on top. You have two options. You can either mix it and drink it, or you can drink the orange on the bottom and then the espresso on the top. One is regular, one is carbonated. I'll take the nitro. You want to take this one? So, I'm going to mix mine cause I like espresso. This was meant to be mixed. It's actually prettying good. This is a little bit light, you know, compared to the usual four shots that you're getting. The orange juice overpowers the espresso in a way that you kind of can't really taste it. And the coffee becomes more of a rounding out chocolatey aftertaste. That's 25% of the flavor. I want to taste the coffee. Whatever orange juice they're using tastes great. I think Lucken is a little bit better. I give it a 7.5. It's good. I would get it again. I think I'll give it a 7.5 as well, especially for a hot summer day. That a little bit carbonated water would be so good. This is a delicious little coffee cocktail. Good job, Luckinn. On to the next. Luckin really outclassed Starbucks with a unique concept earning one of the top places on our leaderboard. But can another spot take its place? And who will be our first place leader? This is called Yang Guo Fu Malatang. So this is the biggest hot pot chain. It is the closest thing to a fast food hot pot. Normally when you do hot pot, you have a big boiling cauldron in front of you. It takes quite a long time to eat cuz you're cooking everything one by one by one. This you pick out all the ingredients you want ahead of time. They take it and they cook it for you. This took 5 minutes and we're done. We're ready to eat. hot pot essentially, but the fast food version. Let's just jump straight into it. This whole bowl was around $8, which I think in comparison to everything that we've gotten here in China, it's one of the most expensive, but it is quite a bit of food, though. This is enough to feed, I would say, two to three people. Would you agree? Absolutely. Twice as much as what we got at the noodle shop per person. And I would argue it's actually slightly less food. So, value is not quite there in terms of like quantity, speed, 5 minutes. So, it's more expensive. It's not slow. Flavor-wise though, I actually think this is really good. It's a right amount of numbing spice. I cannot tell the difference between the flavor of this and the flavor of most hot pot places. Now, I can tell that the inquality of the meat is less, but the flavor of the overall dish, I cannot tell the difference. This just made hot pot more convenient. Get it done within 5 minutes. I think that's a good enough trade-off to get slightly lesser quality of the meat, but you get the convenience and efficiency of having the almost identical taste and flavor. It tastes great. It's seasoned perfectly with salt. It's got the umami. It's got the numbing spice that I want. I mean, I'm gonna give it like an 8.8. That is a fair judgment. Yeah, I would probably give it 8.5 just because it has lower meat quality. Another solid and innovative entry in our fast food journey. But we move on. We are at Wallace, which is another KFC competitor, but this one's unique. It's a little bit more budget friendly, and there's a unique story to it. Public food safety incident that resulted explosive diarrhea right after you eat it in a few hours. Chinese people on the internet actually call it the Splatoon. The Nintendo game's objective is to occupy other people's like surface areas by splashing your paint. And the Wallace is you splashing some other stuff with your butt. Do we want to eat here? Did they resolve this issue? It's all about franchise controls. It was a yes or no question. I guess we'll have to try. So, we entered, we ordered, and to our surprise, we had the fastest spot of the day at 30 seconds. That's like McDonald's level speed. I hope we don't have explosive diarrhea in 30 seconds. Why? So, here we go. Price point a little more expensive, actually, surprisingly. Yeah, this was $1.25 each. But compared to American standards, that's still ridiculously cheap. I think you couldn't get a fried chicken sandwich in America for less than 5 to eight bucks. So, we have our sandwich. They gave us this sort of like spicy seasoning. We're going to try it without that first, and then we'll try it with it. So, cheers. It's juicy. Not as much crunch as some of the other ones. This bun kind of tastes like a McDonald's bun. It's a little spicy. It's kind of lacking flavor for me a little bit. There's not a lot going on. I think it's a little vanilla. Maybe we should try this secret spice. Tell me when. Oh, bring it on, baby. 100% better with this. This just proves my point. Seasoning is so important. Imagine if they just seasoned it properly with this. I guess they just want to make it more accommodating to people who are not into spice. So you can control like how much amount of spice you add in. That's fair. I like to force people into it to be honest. I'm like this is what's good. You're going to enjoy it. Sometimes accommodating is not always the best idea. I'm going to give it a six. I'm just going to give it a five because this is really just the average vanilla type of burger in China. Despite being cheap and fast, Wallace takes the bottom spot on our leaderboard is deserving. We move on. We're in the longest standing foreign pizza chain in all of China. It is Pizza Hut and quite literally the nicest Pizza Hut I think I have ever seen in my life. It's ridiculous. I mean, they have like a reservationist and nice chairs and tables and it's a legit restaurant. It also happens to have the worst steak I've ever seen. We ordered two things. The Grand Slam with a hot dog crust. And I saw Wagyu steak and I thought, "What?" And so I ordered it. We were wondering, "How is this steak $12?" I see why. We're going to move to the pizza. I don't need to say anything about this. That's enough. If you've ever had a frozen baked pizza, that's kind of what you're getting here. It's really not as bad as I thought it would be. I would say it's on par with American Pizza Hut. There's so many types of wiener on this, it's crazy. And this wiener tastes like pineapple. Whereas this wiener, it's just a hot dog. Yeah, I'm just going to give it a six. At the time when I was remembering it, it was one of the few western fancy restaurant. Easily 8.5, but maybe nothing has changed. Maybe we changed, so now it's a six. Let me cut to the chase here. All things considered, I'm going to give this a solid 5.9. I know there's better out here, and we're going to find it. For some reason, I was expecting more from this fine diningesque Pizza Hut, but I was wrong. There's so much good food in China for a low price. I'm confused why anyone would find themselves here. But can our next spot, which is the biggest chain in the world, give us something better. We're at Mixue. They have more than 45,000 stores globally. This is a fast food ice cream place. One ice cream is like 2. It's a good deal and fast. You order it, they give it to you, you get the out. They are super upfront about the material they use. Just powdered milk. I'm not going to lie, it's not very good. They're not over complicating it. Yeah, considering it's less than 30 cents US, there's really nothing else I can ask for. You know, my first taste of it was, man, for ice cream, there's not a lot going on in this. But the more I taste it, it actually kind of is growing on me cuz most ice cream that I'm used to should be intensely flavored. If it's vanilla, it should taste intensely of vanilla, and it should be sweetened properly with a bit of saltiness. This is so light tasting and almost like more of like a frozen milk with a light vanilla and a light sweetness. And the more I taste it, the more I realize, you know, I actually kind of like this variation because it's just a gentle, light ice cream eating experience. It reminds me a lot of the ice cream in Japan where it's just kind of like milk and a little bit of sugar and that's it. I'm not going to feel heavy after I eat this, which I appreciate. Honestly, all things considered, I'm going to give it like a seven. It's not the best ice cream I've ever had, but this would deliver over and over and I would get it again. Solid seven to me. So, we're at Mr. Rice, which is considered to be a Panda Express competitor. It combines the homestyle cooking with fast food efficiency. And all the dishes are laid out just like a buffet. You grab a plate and a spoon. You grab whatever you want and you weigh out and you pay based on the weights that you're getting. And the rice is free and unlimited. And the soup is also for free. That's insane. You could easily go light on the ingredients that you pick up at the buffet and then just go crazy on the rice and pay close to nothing, I bet. So, let's see how it is. I'm just going to go for it. Paying is calculated based on weight. So, drop out the extra oil. Oh, I'm very interested in whatever is going on over there. My god, this is amazing. Look at this. It smells so good. How am I supposed to pick? There's so much good stuff. Oh, this looks great, too. No extra oil. No extra oil. Learn your lesson. Thank you. This is fast food in China. In comparison to Panda Express, I'm already very excited. I don't even know where to begin. I got so many different things. Is this duck? Yep. Yeah. Some green beans. Good. A little overcooked. Okay, we got sort of a chicken and chili. That's the one. Salted perfectly. The chili flavor is so fragrant, tender. Then we have like this sort of glazed chicken. Oh, it's great. Back in the days, like ancient China, smoked meat was the only way that you can preserve meat. Now it's a national dish that you usually eat during Chinese New Year. That's incredible. It's so smoky. It's making me feel a little bit back home in Texas. Rice test is important. They're mass manufacturing rice here. So, a little overcooked, but not too bad. This is the perfect healthy food for a lot of white collar office workers. There are not many places you're going to go to that are considered fast food where you have fresh vegetables, different cuts of meat. The fact that this fits the category. We got all this fresh for $5 for this massive plate of food, it's pretty amazing. Like I would come back here if I was in a rush. I think I'd get an 8.8. It does have more of an emotional value to me because this has brought Sichuan style homemade stir-fried dishes way more nationwide and going more mainstream on the global stage. The value is quite good, although relatively expensive. when you look at Chinese food across China. But the speed is instant. As soon as you're ready to plate it and eat it, you're ready to go. And then flavor is good. Some of the things are kind of like a 6.5, a seven, but some of them are like like the chicken is like an 8.5. I would give this place an 8.3. You pull up Mr. Rice has got you covered. Mr. Rice, I love you. Mr. Rice proves to be a solid final entry in our search for the greatest fast food experience in China. With that score of 8.55, our official winner is Jyu Ywen Noodle Shop. I've tried hundreds of fast food items all over the United States, and it's always about which one's better, this one or that one. And I came here thinking I was going to do that, and I was wrong. Ultimately, we had a simple bowl of noodles made in a mom and pop shop, made correctly, and it was fast. It was also not expensive. In fact, it was one of the cheapest, and it was one of the best. If that's not fast food, I don't know what is. So, love you. Subscribe. See you.