Review: Panda Express - Blazing Bourbon Chicken

Panda Express' Blazing Bourbon Chicken is inspired by bourbon chicken and features crispy-fried boneless chicken bites, onion, and bell pepper wok-tossed in a new sweet and spicy bourbon sauce made with Hot Ones Last Dab Apollo hot sauce and sprinkled with sesame seeds.

A two-entree plate is normally $10.30 here in Los Angeles but I received this courtesy of Panda Express (I went with Mushroom Chicken as the other entree).

Similar to Panda Express' Orange Chicken, the chicken had a slight soggy softness at the surface with a thick crunchy layer underneath (if you're lucky and manage to catch them right out of the wok, they're wonderfully crunchy all around). Inside the chicken pieces were pretty small. Being dark meat, the bites were tender and juicy.

The main flavor of the dish came from the bourbon sauce, which delivered a sweet and savory soy sauce base upfront, followed by a light note of bourbon, and finished with a punch of medium heat that didn't build much or linger for long. In terms of heat, it's not substantially spicier than other spicy dishes on the menu such as Kung Pao Chicken. Hot Ones Last Dab Apollo hot sauce is supposed to be very spicy (rated at 11/10 on a spicy scale for the Hot Ones line of sauces) but I can only guess there's not much of it here at all as the dish was only comfortably spicy. The frozen Hot Ones Spicy Garlic Chicken Strips I recently tried was noticeably spicier despite being labeled as "mild."

Additional mild flavor came from the onion and bell pepper, which also retained a crisp texture.

At the end of the day, Panda Express' Blazing Bourbon Chicken fell into the "good but not great" category for me. I liked the flavors and textures but a sense of novelty or excitement was lacking. It's spicy but it didn't have me sweating or looking for a glass of milk.