Taking one for the team - Restaurant review of Quickly

Thursday, June 17 2010 @ 01:13 AM EDT

Contributed by: Jimbo

    Restaurant: Quickly USA - New Generation Asian Fusion Style Chain Cafe
    Location: 540 Barber Lane, Milpitas CA
    Style of cuisine: Asian junk food
    Price: Cheap
    Vegetarian options: If you care about what you eat you will never eat here
    Website: Quickly USA
What won't I eat for this blog? In Episode 3 of our series on the restaurants of the 99 Ranch Market I took a tour of the lowest of low-end cuisine at Quickly. This is what Quickly calls a pot sticker:



It wasn't horrible. But it didn't taste like anything. It was sitting in my mouth and it acted like food, but you could tell it was just phoning in the role.

Here is the selection I made for my main course:



I'm pretty sure this is supposed to be Fried Tenpura, but please don't let them know the sign is wrong. I like the idea that food can be Fired from its day job, and if any food should be Fired it's definitely this dish. I would normally show you a picture of the dish itself, but the product came out a little darker than the image shown here and as a result it looked exactly like human waste. I kid you not. I wish I had simply ordered the sweet potato fries:



I mean, how badly can you screw up sweet potato fries?

If you're already a patron of Quickly then you know the shortcomings of the restaurant and you've found something safe to order in the morass of choices. If you've never eaten there then I recommend you take a pass. The food is not horrible, but it pales in comparison to that which it emulates. For example, this is what popcorn chicken looks like at Quickly:



I'm not sure what words there are for such an experience. Litigious... Mind numbing... I started to get an MSG buzz about 30 minutes after I left the restaurant.

Quickly does have an elaborate juice, tea, slush and frozen yogurt offering that I should mention. Here are the frozen yogurt options:



I wasn't brave enough to try the frozen yogurt, but I did order a blueberry slush. The slush tasted like the cap fell off the blueberry syrup container and all the blueberry syrup in the store landed in my cup. It was so sweet I think I actually developed diabetes while drinking it.

As the sun set on my Quickly experience and I slowly regained the sense of taste back in my mouth, I realized the Quickly flavor profile was not developed with me in mind. Quickly targets a younger audience, one that is more supportive of the fried arts. If surgar and oil are the two primary flavor notes you're looking for then Quickly may be the restaurant for you. For everyone else I suggest you walk on by, Quickly.

Refrigerator rating: 2 yums (out of a possible 10)

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The Refrigerator
http://therefrigerator.org/article.php?story=20100617011332500