Five-country flavors: Korean, Japanese, Taiwanese, Thai, and

▲ Oba Mama offers five different flavors of fried chicken, pictured here is the Thai flavor.

Reported and photographed by Huang Shiyuan, Taipei

Recently, thanks to Korean dramas, Taiwan has seen a surge in the popularity of Korean-style fried chicken, with Korean fried chicken shops popping up all over the country. However, at first glance, Oba Mama Fried Chicken, located at the entrance of Tonghua Street Night Market, may seem like just another Korean fried chicken joint. In reality, it offers not only Korean-style fried chicken but also a variety of choices including Japanese, Taiwanese, Thai, and American-style fried chicken.

▲ Oba Mama Fried Chicken is located right at the entrance of Tonghua Street Night Market.

Oba Mama Fried Chicken isn’t just a trending topic — its tender texture and delicious taste have also earned praise from food critic Xu Tianlin, who said the chicken has a flavor reminiscent of Japanese nanban fried chicken.Zhang Junyi, General Manager of Oba Mama Gourmet Specialty Storeexplained that they use only chicken thigh meat, sourced from major domestic suppliers such as Dacheng or Charoen Pokphand, ensuring higher quality ingredients. To achieve the perfect flavor in their fried chicken dishes, they specially imported a microcomputer-controlled temperature oil fryer to maintain a constant oil boiling point at 160 degrees Celsius.

▲ Oba Mama uses chicken thigh meat supplied by major vendors like Dacheng and Charoen Pokphand.

In terms of the cooking process, after sourcing the chicken thighs, they are first marinated by mixing them with rice wine, eggs, flour, sweet potato starch, tapioca starch, and wheat flour. The mixture is then refrigerated and marinated for 12 hours. Zhang Junyi emphasized that after marination, the chicken thighs are not coated with a thick layer of flour, so customers can truly enjoy the tender chicken meat. After frying, the chicken pieces are topped with the shop’s specially made sauces based on different flavors to complete the dish.

Oba Mama’s pre-frying preparation and frying process


Oba Mama offers five types of fried chicken: Taiwanese, Japanese, Korean, Thai, and American.The Taiwanese style is sprinkled with a special pepper salt, allowing you to enjoy the natural tenderness of the chicken thigh. The Japanese style is drizzled with a sauce made from katsuobushi soy sauce and garlic. Korean-style fried chicken is coated with Korean spicy sauce. The Thai style comes with a sweet and sour Thai sauce (not spicy), and the American style is served with honey mustard sauce. Zhang Junyi stressed that all sauces are exclusively blended by the head chef, Qiu Hongyi.

Besides the signature fried chicken pieces, Oba Mama also offers stir-fried noodles and fried rice on the iron pan, and even provides bento box delivery services. Zhang Junyi said the stir-fried noodles and fried rice were added to complement the shop’s offerings — if customers want a more filling meal, they can opt for these two menu items. As for the bento box delivery service, it mainly comes from a central kitchen. Zhang explained that since they are not a typical buffet-style eatery and simply aim to offer more diverse services, they purchase ingredients based on orders placed the day before (or earlier). Therefore, customers are advised to call ahead to order their preferred bento box the day before.

Oba Mama Fried Chicken
Address: 1F, No. 77, Tonghua Street, Da’an District, Taipei City
Phone: 02-27375222


▲ The dine-in area has limited seating.


▲ Taiwanese-style fried chicken pieces.


▲ Korean-style fried chicken pieces.


▲ Japanese-style fried chicken pieces.


▲ American-style fried chicken pieces.


▲ Fried chicken cartilage.


▲ Fried chicken wings and drumsticks.