There’s no point trying to intellectualise a review of fried chicken; that would be pretentious. So we’ll just come right out and say it: This is some of the best fried chicken we’ve had in a long while.
Our only mistake was ordering the Combo 1 meal, which came with two wings, a drumstick, a bowl of Korean rice, a small side salad, pickled radish and a drink. Save for a few spoons of the perfectly cooked, slightly glutinous rice, we hardly touched the side dishes because the chicken was just too good.
There are three flavours to choose from: the original soy series coats the chicken in a fragrant soy garlic glaze; the red series uses Korean red chilli peppers for a piquant kimchi-like spicy kick; the sweet and sticky honey series is pre-marinated for 24 hours, fried and then coated in honey sauce. You could choose to have the wings and drumettes, or the drumstick, or a combination of both.
Although it’s a very famous South Korean chain, KyoChon is adamant that it’s not a fast-food outlet. This is because their chicken is not frozen, there’s table service and they only cook to order, which explains the 15-minute wait. Take a bite of the chicken and you could vouch for that. Korean fried chicken is radically different from the Western fried chicken to which we are so accustomed. Rather than a coating of thick batter for a mouthful of crunch, the chicken here is fried just in their marinade, so you get a thin crisp on the outside with all the concentrated flavours of the seasoning while the flesh remains fresh, tender and juicy inside. So even if you’ve left it out for a while, it never gets soggy. Plus, it’s not greasy at all, and KyoChon claims they only use canola oil in their cooking and no MSG.
KyoChon offers the ubiquitous wingettes and drumettes, (six pieces for RM17, 12 pieces for RM30, 20 pieces for RM49); two pieces of drumsticks at RM12, four pieces at RM24 and eight pieces at RM48. You can opt for half a chicken for RM32 or a whole chicken at RM56.
There are more chicken items on the menu – chicken strips coated in rice batter (with dipping sauce), steamed and grilled chicken fillets and salads with more grilled chicken. But we couldn’t imagine why you would want to fill up on the sideshows when the main event – the fried chicken – is this good.