KYOCHON

319 Fifth Avenue
New York, NY 10016
(212) 725-9292

The day of the Boxing Day Storm, the storm that ate our city, Bro and I walked to Koreatown for fried chicken. The recent popularity of Korean fried chicken, has led me to a few places for it here in New York City. Since I live in Queens, I've usually found myself eating it in Flushing or Elmhurst. This time, Koreatown was more convenient.

KyoChon follows the Asian tradition of crazy-over-the-top modern. So there are little TV screens over the urinal displaying people watching you while you pee, music videos are projected onto one wall while another wall rotates rainbow colors like a Pride parade on E. Is it fun in a sort of anime-esque, bubblegum-blowing tween holding a beer friendly kind of way? Yeah. I won't lie. It's kinda fun.

Korean fried chicken differs from American fried chicken in that the American fried chicken tends to have thick, flaky, batter-heavy crusts on thick pieces of meat. The crust almost becomes a side dish. The Korean chicken batter is thinner and smoother and more rigid in its crispness. It's practically a candy shell. There's more to KyoChon's menu than just fried chicken, but that's what I was there for, y'all. Bro ordered a sandwich. Feh. Anyway, KyoChon has all of three flavors. I ordered all three. The Honey Wings were okay. Not wonderful. But okay. Too sweet. Too thickly coated in the syrupy glaze. If you like eating honey glaze with a hint of chicken, instead of the other way around, then they were perfect. The Hot and Sweet Wings were also good. And they were hot. A little too hot actually. Too hot for Bro and while I like my wings to burn, they can't mask the flavor. So like the honey wings, but ironically in reverse, I still found myself asking where the chicken was. One thing that I'll give them a heaping of credit for was that the hot sauce didn't taste like hot sauce. In other words, it didn't taste like an afterthought where all they did to make them hot was splash Tabasco on them. The best wings had to be the Soy Garlic. Tangy. Chickeny. Sweet with a hint of bitter. Ahhh. Finally. This was why I was here.

Bro's sandwich, the Mango Mayo Grilled Chicken Breast Sandwich was a little heavy on the mango mayo sauce and a little light on the flavor. So while it didn't outright suck, I wasn't blown away and I was forced to wipe my hand and wrist off after only one bite from all the dripping sauce. He also tried the Chicken Croquettes, which were pureed chicken and mashed potato, breaded and fried. These were pretty good.