Andrew W.
Yelp
Aria is newly opened as part of the DoorDash Kitchens food hall concept on Bridge St.
Aria is originally from SF, and for a while was one of the top tier takeout/delivery options there. They did boneless Korean fried chicken better than any other place I'd tried, and I ordered it frequently. In the early days of COVID lockdown in 2020, when in-person dining was gone, Aria orders were one of few consistent comforts.
I regret to report that this is not even close to the same food they serve at the original SF Aria. I get that replicating a dish at the first location outside California, over 3000 miles away, will come with its challenges, but c'mon; DoorDash and Aria, this isn't the 19th century. McDonald's and Chipotle and hundreds of other brands have written and refined the playbook already.
Perhaps the most egregious and obvious shortcoming of the fried chicken at this new location is that it clearly was not double-fried. Double-frying is the quintessential characteristic of Korean fried chicken, and the technique they had at the original SF location was masterful, resulting in huge, crisp, craggy chunks of tender, flavorful chicken thigh pieces. The chicken at this location was limp and lightly breaded. It looked like chicken fingers they'd carried out the back of Sticky's from the next block over.
The accompanying sweet & spicy and soy garlic sauces tasted... off, as well. Much flatter, like they had trimmed down the original sauce recipe from 10 ingredients to three.
The one redeeming quality here is that you still get a decent amount of chicken for the price, but I'm really hoping they can bring in the Aria SF founder to see how different this is from his original food and get some QC going here.