Korean Chicken

Korea is justly famous for its barbecue.  It is less well known for its amazing fried chicken, which is twice as crunchy as its American cousin and loaded with strong flavors.  Teresa and I decided to go once weekly to at least one fried chicken restaurant—there are many in Korea, often chains—and compare our meals.  It was a difficult job, but we offer these reviews as our service to you, our reader.

Kkanbu chicken

Our closest chicken place, Kkanbu Chicken is located in the Triple Street Mall, just across the street from the George Mason Korea campus.  The chicken is served incredibly hot—almost too hot to eat when it hits the table. We had the plain fried chicken. The coating is thin and crispy rather than thick and crunchy. The chicken is very juicy. The restaurant’s atmosphere is friendly and there is excellent beer on tap.  Kkanbu chicken is a great place to go if you want a more celebratory atmosphere. It has attractive lights and decoration.  Many chicken places are quite plain for dine-in, as their business is mainly take-out.

IKEA Cafe Chicken

At a Korean IKEA, fried chicken is on the menu. And the chicken is impressively good for what is, after all, a furniture store. The chicken has a nice crunch and a tinge of spice. The breading is moderately thick. Downsides: the chicken is a bit greasier than one might wish. And, this being IKEA, sauces carry an extra charge.  Only drumsticks are available. This is not main event chicken, but if you’re at IKEA it is more than serviceable.

Ho Chicken

Ho Chicken is a fried-chicken mainstay in the area and usually excellent. It is also the least expensive as far as we know of the fried chicken places. The chicken for this review however was disappointing. The exterior was nicely crunchy as usual but the interior was dry—a bit overdone.  Good Korean fried chicken is crunchy on the outside, and juicy within.  The flavoring of the garlic soy chicken, however, was good. Not too sweet as it can be, but a nice mixture of sweet and savory. Even though we had an off-night for this review, do not write Ho Chicken off!

Norangtong

Norangtong chicken is served out hot and crispy with batter on the thicker side. The flavoring of the plain chicken is subtle, but there is a good chili sauce accompaniment that is not overly sweet—as we find some Korea sauces—along with a salt and pepper dip. The chicken was not dry, but it was not super juicy either, which some might consider a virtue since, let’s face it, juicy is a more appealing way of saying greasy. In the interest of full disclosure: we usually get our chicken bone-in, but in a fit of whimsy we got our chicken for this review without bones. Thus we are not exactly comparing apples to apples—or chickens to chickens. If you’re looking for the crispiest chicken you can get, Norangtong is a good choice.

bbq Chicken

Eating here is all about nostalgia for us.  We have a branch of this chain in our hometown of Falls Church, VA (our area has a large ethnic Korean population). It was at the Falls Church branch we made our final decision to come to Songdo.  We often say that our decision to come here was pretty much based on the deliciousness of the chicken. So how is bbq Chicken in Korea? The chicken comes out hot and juicy. It has a light, crispy breading and is only lightly salted. The accompanying red sauce is garlicky, mildly spicy and not overly sweet. The chicken is served as well with mustard, a new taste for us. bbq Chicken serves larger breast pieces with more meat, which is unusual for a Korean chicken place. Can one go home again?  bbq Chicken was not exceptional but there were no false notes either.

Barun Chicken

We were excited for this one, as a Korean colleague told me it was his favorite chicken place (I should note another Korean colleague identified Norangtong as her favorite).  The chain hypes its distinctiveness for limiting to 58 the number of chickens it fries in one batch of oil (“58 Counting, the standard to fry chicken with 18L oil”) and for using rice flour for its breading.  A distinctive feature is the topping of the chicken with lightly salted, thick potato chips. There is a garlic chicken we tried which has lots of raw garlic and a sweet sauce. The chicken is good—hot and juicy—but not a stand out, especially in relation to the expectations we had for it. Barun Chicken’s accompanying sauce is too sweet. We noticed some other condiments but only on leaving, and note these were not served to us.

 

We think we would have found even more differences among places if we had more frequently ordered their flavored rather than plain chicken.  However, the menus are typically either untranslated or only roughly translated, so ordering a flavored chicken we find more risky. Some are too spicy for us, too sweet, too gooey, or all three.  Last night, back at Kkanbu Chicken we took a risk and got an excellent spicy chicken that was neither too sweet nor gooey—though still too spicy for Teresa.

Coda: late-February 2020

When people world over think of Korea at the time of this writing in late February 2020 they are probably thinking of the high incidence of covid-19 cases. And the situation is serious. But we are buoyed, in part, by the excellence of the Korean authorities in dealing with the situation, and mindful that one reason Korea has so many cases is that it has been so successful in identifying them, and completely transparent about the results, as detailed in this article.  (In other words, other countries may have equally high rates of infection, but are less able or willing to identify cases.) The excellent Korean public health infrastructure, as well as the knowledge, energy and inventiveness that Koreans have brought to tackle this situation, represent everything we love about Korea. In our experience, they do things right in Korea, and they go all in—be it a a small pleasure like fried chicken, or matters of great consequence, like public health and healthcare.  If you’re thinking of coming to Korea, we hope that when this situation ends (as it will, and maybe by the time you’re reading this has) you will come and see for yourself!