ma'ono fried chicken and whisky - seattle, wa

SHOCKER - swong went to a restaurant that serves whisk(e)y and  fried chicken.

but in my defense, it wasn't like i just googled "whiskey restaurants near seattle". (although that would be a legitimate assumption)

I actually found this place while searching food and wine's for seattle restaurant ideas. mark fuller won best new chef 2009 for his restaurant spring hill, which also happens to be on this (dated) list of best seattle restaurants. when i did some more researching, i discovered that spring hill had rebranded into ma'ono fried chicken and whisky in feb 2012.

award winning chef serving hawaiian influenced fried chicken and whisky drinks?? UH OK I'LL GO.

outside

** a little heads up, when you make your reservation (on opentable to get your points, obviously)...order the fried chicken then because you need to give a 24 hour notice in order to get it.  i'm not really sure what happens if you try to order it the night of, but let's just pretend they give you dirty looks and 'tude for not checking yelp/their website/swong's blog. :)

the open kitchen

selfie!!!

the gold 'n brown

for my drank, i asked the waiter to help me pick. i was between the gild (Bulleit Bourbon, Dolin Blanc, St. Germain, Grapefruit Bitters) and gold 'n brown (Dry Ginger Ale, Maker’s Mark Whisky, Charred Cedar Bitters) i was really underwhemled with it. it was like a mammie mae but with less whiskey taste and sweeter. uhh...rude. (and yes i did just link an fbook picture..) what's also annoying is that he said it was his favorite on the menu! also, maybe i've become a bar snob but if you're going to brag about being a whiskey restaurant, you should have more than three whiskey-based cocktails. there are standard bars in chicago that have more than 3 drinks per alcohol. just saying....

the whiskey drink was meh for me ...but how was the fried chicken?

so with the order, you ended up getting a whole fried chicken, housemade kimchi, two dipping sauces (one mustard, one gochujang-like), and a bowl of rice.

the price for all of this....$40.

pretty steep, i know. but hey, we were on vacation. was it worth it? in my opinion yes. the skin was thicker/more breaded than crisp's and was super flavorful.  like, pepper/ginger/oniony flavors going on. and if its the restaurant's namesake i had to check it out... and this dish became the majority of our meal. i mean, it is a whole chicken. we ended up with tons of leftovers (which were still delicious by the way)

we were told to order an extra side so we ordered an arugula/spinach salad that came with proscuitto and honeycrisp apples. sounded good but didn't really come out well. i think the apples were cut too thick, so you couldn't really get a good bite that wasn't too heavy on the apple. cold apple + room temp lettuce and proscuitto = swong not having it.

ok...so is it worth checking out? i'd say yes. how many times can you say you've been to a hawaiian fried chicken restaurant that also specializes in whiskey?? lessons learned though - don't get that salad, maybe pass on the whiskey cocktails, and go with more people so you can try more plates. (other stuff on the menu looked really great but we had that whole chicken to eat for dinner..saddies)