One of the clearest differences between Korean food restaurants here and in Korea is the size of menus. Over there, it’s commonplace for a restaurant to specialise in one thing and for the menu to reflect that; maybe there will be only one dish, a few similar things, or one larger item and various supporting players. Here, Korean restaurants have enormous menus with many cooking styles – hot pots, fried chicken, barbecue, sizzling plates, noodles, dumplings, soups and more.
CokCo is a classic example, with a huge menu featuring a huge variety in both type and quality. The best way to navigate it? Go straight for the fried chicken and design your meal around it. The birds are technically perfect – the batter is audibly crisp, the meat juicy enough to drip and all the saucy flavours are both powerfully seasoned and never detract from the crunch of the batter. Though probably the most impressive thing is just how damn hot it is when it lands on your table. It’s incredible – as though it’s launched straight to your table from the fryer by a cannon. Props to whoever designed the CokCo kitchen systems, they must be run on Dominoes levels of efficiency. Obviously, take caution biting into it or even picking it up, regardless of whether you’re sporting the plastic gloves supplied with your order.
What to have with it depends on booze consumption. If you’re going all out beer and chook, may as well get a platter of spicy chicken feet with a few seaweed-dusted rice balls, or a sizzling platter of sweet and salty beef ribs on the bone. If there’s nothing to chase all that red sauce and meat unctuousness between bites, maybe a cold noodle salad with a few boiled whelks or just a steamed egg bowl will suit.