Given how identified Korean fried chicken (KFC) is these days with Korean food, it might surprise you to learn that its popularity, particularly in combination with chilled beer (chimaek, as the combo is known), is a relatively new thing—probably arising in the late-70s at the earliest and not really becoming hugely popular—as a combination—until a couple of decades later. That said, it is very much an iconic thing now and the country is dotted both with outlets of many, many popular chains (all seemingly excellent) as well as many stand-alone restaurants that serve up chilled beer, fried chicken, and other things to eat with chilled beer. Walking around the city, especially later in the evening, you can see a number of these smaller establishments with younger people eating and drinking outdoors. We passed one such place, Chicken House, a number of times while walking late in the evening near Anguk subway station and finally repaired there for dinner one weekend after taking in the lantern festival near the Jogyessa Temple. Here’s a quick look.
As you’ll see from the pictures, Chicken House was pretty slammed that evening (as were most eateries in the general vicinity, given the masses of people looking for sustenance after the festival subsided). There were no tables immediately available outside, which is what we would have preferred. We were, however, also hungry and so accepted one inside happily enough. We were in the smaller half of the dining room and it was a little on the cramped side. As is the norm with establishments of this kind in Seoul, service is pretty basic and almost non-existent when the place is as busy as they were. A menu was slapped down, our order was taken in a hurry and it would have been a bad idea after that to trouble the staff (mostly just the three women who seemingly run the place) for anything not entirely crucial.
What did we get? They offer fried chicken in unseasoned/original and seasoned (sweet and spicy) incarnations and we got the half and half combo. To be safe, we also got an order of fried shrimp; and then considering how busy they were we decided—in case the preceding were to prove not to be enough—to also get an order of the spicy sea snail salad. We were told the latter would take a while as they were focusing on putting out chicken at volume. We said we were fine with that. Oh yes, chilled beer too, of course. The beer and then the fried stuff came out pretty quickly. The chicken was very good; the shrimp was fine but less essential.
As we got done eating all this, the crush began to ease somewhat and the staff became more relaxed and even a little chatty as the sea snail salad was brought out. I had not asked the missus for details when she’d ordered it and had expected it would be another deep-fried dish (the menu is entirely in Korean). What showed up was instead sea snails/whelk tossed in a spicy and tangy dressing with vegetables, all of it served with cold noodles. You use the provided plastic gloves to mix it all up by hand and then you eat it. We did and it was dynamite.
For a look at the restaurant and everything we ate, launch the slideshow below. Scroll down to see how much it all cost and to see what’s coming next.
Cost? 73,500 won which is about $53 at the current exchange rate. Well worth it for the quantity and quality. And the atmosphere at these kinds of places really can’t be beat. We should really eat out at more places like this on our next visit.
Okay, next week’s Seoul report will probably feature more grilled meat (beef, this time). Tomorrow I’ll have another seafood report from Bombay in April; and then on Sunday another seafood report, this time from Newark last October.