Let’s keep the Seoul reports rolling. When last seen we were eating noodle soup and dumplings at Myeondong Kyoja. Today I have for you a fried chicken report. We ate fried chicken on a few occasions on our previous, longer stay in Seoul in Feb/March of 2024. One of those meals was at an outpost of one of the major fried chicken chicken chains, Kyochon. On this trip we ate it at an outpost of another major fried chicken chain, Nene Chicken. Kyochon was founded at the start of the 1990s and Nene Chicken was founded at the end of the decade. While perhaps not quite as well-known in the US as Kyochon and some of the other major players that have set up franchises here, Nene Chicken has a very large presence in South Korea as well as in East and South East Asia (and also Australia, New Zealand and Canada). Most importantly for our needs, they had a location a couple of minutes walk from our flat in Cheongpa-dong.

We descended on said location, somewhat alarming the family that runs it. Well, alarm may be too strong a word but we certainly surprised them. This because they manifestly do all their business via takeout and delivery apps. They have some tables for dine-in customers but from the general disorder of the place it seemed quite likely that we were the first people in their history to eat in. This did mean that we got the chicken in its optimum condition after it left the fryer; and it was very good chicken indeed.

As at most of the fried chicken chains, there is a dizzying variety of flavour options for Nene’s fried chicken. We zoomed in quickly on three of them. They are the pioneers of so-called “snowing/snow” chicken which sees the chicken doused in cheese powder. We had to get this. We also wanted to get one of their hot varieties as well as their soy-garlic flavour—which may be our family’s consensus favourite of the various styles of mega-chain Korean fried chicken. In the end we ended up getting a half-half combo of the basic snowing chicken and the so-called “hot bling chicken” and a full order of the soy-garlic. All were good; the soy-garlic was again our pick as the best. Oh yes, just as I cannot resist naengmyeon on a menu in Seoul, the missus cannot resist tteokbokki and she ordered it here as well (they have a small section of non-chicken dishes). She had low expectations and they were handily surpassed.

For a look at the restaurant and everything we ate, launch the slideshow below. Scroll down for price etc.

Well, I told you to scroll down for price but I’m realizing now that I did not take a picture of the check or save it. But my credit card statement for June tells me we paid all of $36.70 for the meal. A pretty good value for what was quite a lot of food.

A bit of comedy on departure. Nene Chicken’s motto, displayed on their sign, is “Happy Choice”. While leaving we noticed a branch of another major fried chicken chain across the street, BHC. What is their motto? “Better & Happier Choice”. Well, maybe on our next visit we’ll put that to the test. We did not eat any more fried chicken on this trip. My next Seoul report will feature more meat though: this time a meal centered on grilled pork. That’ll be later this week. I’ll have a couple more restaurant reports before then: a Twin Cities report tomorrow and another Delhi report on Friday.