Puradak

From the moment its name was announced, Orange Blossom – The Oriental Kitchen was a weird addition to Buena Park’s shopping and dining destination The Source, and now it’s officially gone. Today, all of its signage – including the distinctive red cladding from its predecessor, Fifty One Chinese Kitchen – has been removed, and both the building and its social media account have completed their transitions into Puradak (Korean for “pure” “chicken”).

As the first U.S. location of a South Korean chain, the third-floor Puradak focuses on a differentiated version of Korean fried chicken from its first-floor rival Pelicana Chicken. At Puradak, chicken is battered and oven-baked before being fried, rather than being double-fried. The result is very moist and tender meat, with a crispy but not insanely crispy exterior.

We tried most of Puradak’s core offerings, including regular wings, boneless wings, and chicken sandwiches, as well as several of their unique sauces: a Mabulro three-flame spicy red sauce with soy and garlic, which tasted nice but wasn’t very spicy at all, with an odd crouton garnish; a non-spicy black garlic and soy Black Aglio, which was a more powerful version of the common soy-garlic found at other Korean fried chicken places, garnished with garlic chips; and a creamy chili mayo drizzled rather than tossed on one of our sandwiches, while the other one was “classic” and plain. Each wing order comes with a side such as radishes or fries; the sandwiches don’t.