Jollibee

While KFC and Popeyes are two of the best-known American fried chicken chains, Jollibee is the Phillippines’ equivalent, offering Chickenjoy-branded fried chicken in buckets, sandwiches, and tenders, as well as burgers, fries, spaghetti, and dessert pies. With over 1,300 locations worldwide – 70 in the United States – Jollibee has two restaurants in Orange County: One right inside the front doors of Irvine’s Filipino supermarket Seafood City, and another down the street from Anaheim’s Seafood City location.

We’ve visited Jollibee’s Irvine location twice, and if we were eating more fried chicken these days, this would be in our top three places locally for that item – Gus’s in Santa Ana probably ranks first. Though their spicy fried chicken has experienced supplier issues recently, we’re fans of both the (wonderfully, actually) spicy and standard fried chicken sandwiches, which go toe-to-toe with Popeyes’ and Chick-fil-A’s in flavor and satisfyingly crispy batter.

That said, we weren’t as fond of the chain’s sweet spaghetti with hot dog chunks, though it’s apparently an acquired taste, and the desserts are pretty limited. Thankfully, at the Irvine store, you can go beyond Jollibee’s pies by walking over to the Red Ribbon dessert shop for Filipino cakes. Unless you’re intrigued by the phrase “peach mango,” which is the better of their two pie flavors, we recommend looking elsewhere for your post-chicken sweets.