Japanese festival food: karaage

Over the last few months I've been introducing the various foods you can get a food stalls at festivals in Japan. I almost overlooked the one food we buy most at festivals: Karaage! Karaage is a bite size piece of chicken that is marinated and coated with flour before deep frying. It is one of the most loved and common dishes in Japan. And it is widely available from convenience stores to high end restaurants. Moreover, it is also frequently served at home and / or put in bento box lunches.

It is no surprise then that it is also one of the most common festival food stalls in Japan. Big or small, most festivals in Japan have at least one karaage stall available. Unfortunately, the quality of the karaage ranges greatly. I've had some really delicious karaage and some really horrible karaage at festivals in Japan before. I've even had the misfortune of biting into an undercooked piece of karaage too. It can be luck of the draw, but (depending on the festival) you can also research in advance what stalls will be participating and what their average reviews are online. 

It is not gospel, but another way to tell if a stall's karaage is considered good, is if there is a much longer queue at it than other surrounding stalls. Especially if the karaage isn't particularly cheap, chances are people are queuing up because of the stalls reputation or their personal experience with it. Personally, I am not one for crowds, so I usually do the reverse: go to the stall with the least amount of people! However, as above, I have ended up with some dodgy karaage doing it that way before. But in saying that, 9 out of 10 times, the karaage is really good!