There’s an unspoken rule in the world of Korean fried chicken joints that many food enthusiasts have come to recognize. It’s a rule that may seem counterintuitive to some, but it’s one that has proven to be true time and time again. The rule is simple: the worse the cabbage slaw, the better the chicken.
This rule was put to the test during a recent visit to Two-Two Chicken in Myeongdong, a popular spot known for its delectable fried chicken. The coleslaw served at this joint was a far cry from the creamy, well-mixed slaw that many of us are accustomed to. Instead, it was a rather haphazard concoction of cabbage, mayo, and ketchup, seemingly thrown together without much thought or effort.
But this lack of attention to the slaw was not a sign of poor quality or lack of care. On the contrary, it was a bold statement. It was as if the restaurant was saying, “Our chicken is so good, we don’t need to impress you with our slaw.” And impress they did, but not with their slaw.
The fried chicken at Two-Two Chicken was nothing short of spectacular. Each piece was perfectly fried to a golden brown, with a crispy exterior that gave way to tender, juicy meat. The fries that accompanied the chicken were equally as impressive, perfectly seasoned and fried to perfection.
To wash it all down, a couple of glasses of beer were served, providing a refreshing contrast to the rich, savory flavors of the chicken and fries. The beer was cold and crisp, the perfect accompaniment to a meal of fried chicken.
This experience at Two-Two Chicken was a testament to the unspoken rule of Korean fried chicken joints. It was a reminder that sometimes, it’s not about the sides or the extras. Sometimes, it’s all about the main event. And in this case, the main event was undoubtedly the fried chicken.
So, the next time you find yourself at a Korean fried chicken joint and you’re served a less-than-impressive slaw, don’t be quick to judge. Instead, take it as a sign that you’re in for some truly exceptional chicken. After all, the worse the slaw, the better the chicken.
I’ve been writing about Korean food in Seoul since 2004 at ZenKimchi. I’ve consulted Anthony Bourdain, Andrew Zimmern, Lonely Planet, Conde Nast Traveler, The Travel Channel, and other world media in finding the must eat Korean foods. Here’s the ultimate list. These are foods you can find specific restaurants for. I’m not including foods that you’d find as side dishes, like Japchae and Kimchi.
Beginner’s Quest
This list is getting so hyuuuge that I’m dividing it into Beginner, Intermediate, and Advanced. Beginner is if you’re new to Korean food, or if it’s your first time in Korea. These are also the foods that are crowd pleasers–the greatest hits. The Top-40 music of Korean food.
Korean BBQ
The first must-eat Korean food that springs to mind. Cooking meat at your table and wrapping it in lettuce. There’s something primal about that. Korean BBQ is all about community and fun. In Korea itself, pork is king. Beef costs so much it’s for special occasions.
Where to eat Korean BBQ
It’s hard to screw up Korean BBQ in Korea. The competition is so fierce that mediocre places don’t hang out long.
Mapo Jeong Daepo 마포정대포
My go-to place is still Jeong Daepo in the Mapo neighborhood, near Gongdeok Station. The whole area is full of BBQ aromas. Most all the restaurants in that area are great. We made sure Anthony Bourdain went there the last time he was in Seoul. It’s the main place we go to on The Ultimate Korean BBQ Night Out.
Hongik Sutbul Galbi Sogeum Gwi 홍익숯불갈비소금구
I don’t know how long this will hold out against the pressure of gentrification. It’s a packed, packed, packed place. They give your meat a pre-cook over strong fire before finishing it at your table.
Chicken & Beer
“Chimaek” (Chicken + Maekju | beer) got its start in the early 1970s. It’s now such a great must-eat Korean food institution that we have more chicken restaurants than there are McDonald’s in the entire world. There’s something about this combination. Strangely, it works well with watered down Korean beers–preferably Cass. I swear. I’m more a fan of classic styles. Recent styles of fried chicken lean more to the American style–thick flour-based crust. I like the thin starch-based coating with the aromatic spicies.
Where to eat Chicken & Beer
I’d almost say it’s hard to go wrong, but it is. Chicken hofs are neighborhood haunts. There’s no exclusive I-gotta-try-this chicken pub with a line out the door. In fact, if there’s a line out the door stay far away from it. My rule of thumb is this. If it’s full of beautiful young women taking Insta-selfies, it’s not good chicken. If it’s grease stained and full of middle-aged men who look like life has kicked them in the teeth, great chicken.
Two-Two Chicken 둘둘치킨
You can’t go wrong with Two-Two (pictured above). You’ll likely be the youngest person in any of its locations. It’s a franchise, but each venue acts like a mom-and-pop shop. The basic recipe and yangnyeom (spicy sweet garlic sauce) are the same, but they put their own spins on the sauces. We include a stop at a Two-Two on our Authentic Korean Chicken & Beer Experience. They’re outside Gongdeok Station, and the couple who runs it is great and welcoming. I want them to get more love.
Chicken Baengi 치킨뱅이
They also do it classic style. Get their chicken 3-ways: fried, sauced, and garlic. Then go for the pa dalk, boneless chicken thighs on top of dressed ribbons of green onions. My favorite location is run by two ladies on the north of the main strip of Hongdae. Go out Hongik University Station, exit 7 (Holiday Inn) and head due south a couple of blocks. It’ll be on your right.
Nurungji Tongdalk 누룽지통닭
A new brand, they don’t do fried. Chicken is spit roasted over wood and served on sizzling platters of crispy rice. We also go to this on the new Authentic Korean Chicken & Beer Experience. The ones near Gongdeok and Sookmyung Women’s University kill.
Locations?
Since these are franchises, your best bet is to copy and paste the Korean names above into Google Maps, Naver Map, or Kakao Map.
Kimchi Jjigae
Okay, you fans of “Always Be My Maybe.” This stew sits on the pantheon of comfort foods, next to macaroni and cheese. It is so perfect on a chilly Seoul night. You want it chock full of tofu and pork. The canned tuna version is also quite good, though I like it better when it’s served at a drinking establishment in a beat-up tin pot.
Where to eat Kimchi Jjigae
Most Korean diners, like Kimbap Cheonguk, will have it on the menu. There are few places that make it the star of their menus, except…
Omori Jjigae 오모리찌개전문점
Go down to Jamsil, across the lake from Lotte World, and up to the second floor for this. It’s a chain, but this is the flagship store. Go to the second floor. The first floor is for black bean noodles. Here, you can get 3-year-old Kimchi Jjigae. You’d be surprised at how subtle and smooth it tastes.
Gwanghwamun Jip 광화문집
Tiny, tiny, tiny place near Gyeongbokgung Palace. They have two items, a very tart pork kimchi jjigae and gyeran mari (rolled omelet). Get both.
Bibimbap
(Gogung Jeonju Bibimbap)
The king of rice bowls. There are many kinds of bibimbap. There’s the dolsot sizzling kind. There’s the fancy Jeonju bibimbap. There’s your basic Korean diner bibimbap served in a plastic bowl with a fried egg. Contrary to what you may have had outside Korea, it doesn’t always come sizzling, and it doesn’t always come with an egg. There are infinite combinations.
Where to eat Bibimbap
Like Kimchi Jjigae, it’s available in most diners. There is a chain called Bon Bibimbap, the same as Bon Juk. It’s just fine and dandy. But if you want to go for something more serious…
Jeonju Yuhalmeoni Bibimbap 전주유할머니비빔밥
Respect, respect, respect. Grandmother knows how to make good bibimbap. This place has been around for over 50 years. Simple menu. Get the bibimbap and the Kongnamul Gukbap (Bean Sprout Soup).
Gogung 고궁
I love Gogung (pictured above). The original location is in Jeonju. It’s a case of franchising out and collapsing. It’s hard to find a Gogung in Seoul anymore. Thankfully, there is one in the Starfield Mall in Gangnam. This is classic refined royal Jeonju bibimbap served in brass bowls.
Naengmyeon
Chilled. Buckwheat. Noodles.
It’s in my top ten of favorite Korean foods. All the chilled buckwheat noodle dishes are. Naengmyeon itself comes from North Korea. The classic Pyongyang style is light with a clean sophisticated broth. Can you believe that before the 20th century, northern Korea was known for more fancy artistocratic cuisine than the south?
Naengmyeon always hits the spot at the end of a barbecue meal, with a few squirts of vinegar and hot mustard from the bottles sitting next to you. That may be why places like Woo Lae Oak are famous for the naengmyeon. Fancy BBQ must follow with refined naengmyeon. There are usually two types available, noodles in soup (mul naengmyeon), and noodles mixed with a spicy gochujang sauce (bibim naengmyeon). Of course, there are many more varieties, like there are of bibimbap. Baby steps.
Where to eat Naengmyeon
If you’re in Korea for a short while, just order a bowl at the end of your BBQ dinner. The one pictured above was just a W5,000 (~$4.25 USD) lunch special at a little BBQ joint near my regular jogging route. Otherwise, try these places.
Woo Lae Oak 우래옥
Famous, famous place. Almost too famous for being too famous. I like it, but it feels a bit stodgy. It’s where you take your grandma after church. The prices are premium, but it’s worth it for the naengmyeon.
Dongmu Bapsang (Comrade’s Table) 둥무밥상
He used to cook for officers in the North Korean army before defecting to the South. Now his cozy shop serves dishes that he misses from home. Yes, definitely eat the naengmyeon here. Also try the soondae sausages.
Jeongin Myeonok 정인면옥
Watch out for the lunch lines here. It gets crowded. The naengmyeon is great, but it may also be because it’s one of the few good restaurants in Yeouido.
Street Food
When in Asia, tourists want street food. Seoul has good street food, but don’t expect what you’d find in Southeast Asia. Street food in Korea primarily acts as a snack and late night starch filler for an alcohol-laden stomach. Most carts serve the same exact thing. There are variations, but those are in areas that cater to tourists and college students.
Tteokbokki
Don’t call it “topoki!” That was some hare-brained scheme concocted by a government agency ten years ago. They’re chewy rice cakes in a spicy sauce. I personally think the stuff on the street is sweeter because it’s more suited for kids. Tteokbokki in bricks-and-mortars, like Jaws Food and Mimine (pictured above), tend to be better. Spicier and more savory.
Odeng/Eomuk
Fish cakes on sticks soaking in MSG-saturated broth. Just go and grab a stick, brush on a few happy dabs of sauce with the brush Bob Ross style, eat, and pay. The proprietor counts the number of sticks you have left over.
Hot Ba
Or Hot Bar? It’s fish dough shaped into logs on sticks and deep fried like a corn dog. In fact, they come with hot dogs and other ingredients in them. That’s one of my favorite street foods.
Twigim
Fried stuff. Usually sweet potatoes, shrimp, sesame leaves. It’s like tempura but heavier.
Soondae
The proper romanization is sundae, but I don’t want you to confuse this with ice cream. They’re blood and glass noodle sausages. The traditional version uses rice instead of noodles, but the street version uses the glass ones, giving them a bouncy texture. It’s served with pig liver and offal. What I like to do is make Kim-Tteok-Soon. Mix the Twigim and Soondae together with Tteokbokki sauce. It’s what Harold and Kumar would crave if they lived in Korea.
Hotteok
Fried dough stuffed with brown sugar, nuts, and other goodies. They are delicious and make great hand warmers. They emerge in high numbers during winter.
Bungeobbang
Sweet cakes stuffed with sweet red bean or custard. Another great hand warmer and quite good.
Gyeranbbang
Literally, “egg bread.” Sweet pancake batter cooked in a cup like a muffin with an egg cracked inside. Sweet and savory. Protein and carbs. It’s the breakfast you never knew you needed.
Where to eat Seoul Street Food
You can get it most anywhere. Here are some areas that have a unique touch.
Myeong-dong
It’s one of the few times I’ll say Myeong-dong has better food. The street food scene there is competitive. But Myeong-dong is like Times Square in New York. There are more tourists than locals. It’s here that you’ll find the Frankenstein creations, like lobster with cheese. The Tornado Potato was born here, as well as many street food staples and flashes in the pans.
Insa-dong
It’s another touristy area. Here you’ll find the famous Insa-dong Hotteok, which puts a bit of cornmeal in its dough, giving it a super crunchy texture. Other highlights are the fire-grilled chicken on a stick and my beloved egg breads. Insa-dong’s street food scene took a bad hit from both COVID-19’s tourism dearth and the relentless bulldozing to make way for bland shopping malls.
Hongdae
Carts with the basics camp outside Hongik University Station, exit 9. Further down, past the buskers, you can find what I call Crazy Street Food Alley. It’s a series of stalls that are always rotating with new street food ideas. It’s like a market research lab throwing everything against the wall to see what sticks.
Noryangjin Cup Rice Road 컵밥거리
Now this is food that is meant to be eaten like a meal. These stands cater to young adults studying for professional exams. The cram schools to help them prepare for these career tests congregate here. Cup Rice Road sprouted as a bunch of carts to feed these poor hungry young professionals-to-be. Here’s a map of all the places I’ve mentioned.
Patbingsu
Dessert! We don’t really have desserts in the Western sense in Korea. We do have this shaved ice treat. The competition each summer with Bingsu makers gets more intense each year. It’s a war! The goal is to shave ice so perfect it’s fluffy fresh fallen snow. The ice itself usually comes from frozen milk, but I’ve seen other ice sources, including coffee and makgeolli (Korean rice ale).
Where to eat Patbingsu
The margins make this lucrative, so everyone is trying to get into the game. Most all bakery chains, like Paris Baguette and Tous Les Jours, get all into this. Most coffee shops do this. There are some places that specialize in it.
Sulbing 설빙
Sulbing is a franchise that popped up a few years ago. I wondered how risky such a venture would be–as in, who would order bingsu in winter? But they’ve done well. They’re crowded in the summer. Sulbing specializes in Instagrammy bingsu, and that’s a good thing. They’re showstoppers. Don’t worry about how large they are. Remember they’re just shaved ice. When melted the liquid would fit into a grande Starbucks cup. If you’re traveling with kids this is the treat they’ll remember. Since it’s a franchise, just copy and paste 설빙 into your map app of choice to find your closest location.
Mealtop 밀탑
Odd name. Odd location. It’s hidden on the 5th floor of Hyundai Department Store in Apgujeong. Well, not really hidden. It takes up a lot of space. But you have to go up a bunch of escalators to get there. They have a big variety of bingsu. What I like is that the portions or smaller, so you can try different flavors in one go. They are starting to franchise out.
The one festival I had been looking forward to this season had been the first ever Chicken Festival in Korea. At least, it was billed as that. I think it’s safe to say that the two biggest international draws to Korean food lately have been barbecue and fried chicken. We have a ddeok festival and a kimchi festival (yawn). We still don’t have a barbecue festival, but I was hoping this chicken festival would be going in the right direction.
Sorry.
Chicken, chicken everywhere, but not a drop of beer to drink!
I shoulda known better. It was more of a trade show. A very sad trade show. Only two or three fried chicken restaurants showed at this, and they didn’t supply any alcoholic refreshments, which complete the Korean fried chicken experience. Instead it was a lot of supermarket chicken products festering away in refrigerator cases that obviously weren’t cold enough.
Ewww!
I did spend a good bit of time there, hoping something interesting would occur. It was a great place if anyone wanted to do a study on the social tendencies of Koreans and lines. In Seoul, particularly, I have observed that lines are like velcro. If people see a line, be it at a shoe store or an overrated restaurant, they’ll join in. Sometimes, I’d go to a food cart or something that has no people, get something, and find that a line had instantly formed behind me. I have always wondered if they were standing in line for a desired product or just standing in line for the sake of it, not knowing what was in store.
In this case, there was a line a half a kilometer long for a paper cup of a few chicken nuggets from BBQ Chicken. I’ve had BBQ Chicken. I know what it tastes like. I like it. But I’m not standing in line thirty minutes for two chicken nuggets–free or not. In fact, the booth across from BBQ started putting fried chicken on its counter, and people looked puzzled. They didn’t see anyone already standing in line for the rival chicken nuggets, so they didn’t know what to do.
“Should I go snag some of those chicken nuggets? No one is standing in line for them. But then again, no one is standing in line for them.”
So, while I was there taking pictures of the line, I reached out with my left hand and got a cup of chicken nuggets. No wait.
But it gets even weirder.
There was a sign for something called a “Chicken Party” starting in 45 minutes. Three people stood and read the sign. Instantly a line formed behind them. I guess the people in line eventually figured out they were waiting for no reason, and the line disappeared ten minutes later.
Other noteworthy bits about the Chicken Festival Trade Show.
Turkish kebab joints made a strong showing.
Chicken on a stick was not so popular.
The coolest thing I found were these finger condoms for eating messy foods–like fried chicken. Of course, there was a big line at the booth, and I just was interested in taking pictures of the product. Then a lady came by and handed me some free samples.
Score!
So, I know none of the organizers aren’t reading and don’t care. But let me get this out for catharsis.
A chicken festival should be a chicken FESTIVAL. I understand that this was planned more as a trade show. But using the word “festival” was a bait-and-switch, not just for me but for the general public. That’s why we had these lines of ordinary Korean consumers there, but the deal making booth for buyers and suppliers was pathetically empty.
A real Korean fried chicken festival would have great international appeal, much more so than the Chewy Glutinous Play-doh Ddeok Festival. I’ve actually had a group from overseas contact me–ME–to connect them with fried chicken franchises here. There’s a freakin’ market out there that the ajosshis-in-charge are again ignoring blissfully. So, let’s go whole chicken on this and make it a real festival. Let’s have more fried chicken booths with beer on tap. Let’s have games, real games, for the kids and young couples. Let’s have music and events (not that weird Chicken Party) and contests and raffles and pony rides…
I want pony rides!
Next time, guys, really, really, do it!
I don’t have many photos, but you can find them on the Flickr account.
