Much like a river in ancient Greece, you seemingly can’t step into the same Choong Man twice. Even better, the chain offers an option to make your chicken “tikkudak,” crisping and smoking it in a proprietary charcoal oven.īut there’s a catch. And the curry is a masterwork of lightly sweet, earthy depth.
Their signature snow onion, meanwhile, comes slathered in a sweet, mayo-based sauce that seems custom-made for a Southern palate. This goes for an earthy soy garlic brightened with a light bite of chili pepper, and a flavorful red hot pepper chicken so Vesuvian it’s nearly psychotropic - it shares with Nashville’s hot chicken the ability to slip your tongue into a mind-altering and de Sadean realm of heat, where pain and pleasure have lost all distinction. On multiple visits to Hampton and Virginia Beach, I’ve found their chicken to be thickly crisp-breaded, juicy, meaty, smoke-charred and impossibly dense with flavor. Their fried chicken, whether delivered as wings or tenders or an indiscriminately chopped whole bird, has already become something of a personal obsession: I’ve eaten it more times than I care to disclose. She’s opening two more in Richmond, and scouting spots in Norfolk and Chesapeake. And local Realtor Soo Choi, who teamed with the owners of Choong Man franchises in Northern Virginia, isn’t stopping there. The most deliriously, mind-bendingly delicious Korean fried chicken I have eaten in Hampton Roads was from Choong Man, a chain that boasts more than 200 locations in Korea and is now pushing out franchises in a shotgun blast across the American map - in Texas, Georgia, Kansas, and especially in Virginia.Ĭhoong Man (which pops up on delivery apps as CM Chicken), has opened three locations in Hampton Roads in the past six months. $11-$15 for a box of about a dozen tenders or wings. Lynnhaven Road, Virginia Beach, 75 200 Monticello Ave., Williamsburg (inside Bonanza Social Kitchen), 75. Here’s your guide to the other KFC in Hampton Roads.Ģ040 Coliseum Drive, Hampton, 75 908 S. For apples-to-apples comparison, we decided to leave out the Korean-inspired fusion versions made at spots like Alkaline Ramen in Norfolk or Hot Pho in Virginia Beach, and the sauce-slathered Korean fried chicken sandwiches you sometimes find at local bars. We’ve spent the past month or two touring the local spots that have made Korean fried chicken their specialty, and ranked them in order of preference.
And so here we are, eating a delicious glut of crispy, spicy, garlic-spiked Korean fried chicken. The Korean chains are also expanding into new markets - most notably to China and the United States.
#Korean boom chicken skin
When corn or potato starch is used in the breader, the result can be a paper-thin skin that crackles like the top of a creme brulee, fuming with garlic and fried onion and chili and the deep ferment of soy. What differentiates Korean fried chicken is simple: the flavors, and the double dip in the fryer that leads to both less grease and more crispness. Now there are two dueling Seoul food chains and at least three homegrown spots dedicated to Korean fried chicken. Early in 2019, Hampton Roads sported only a couple dedicated Korean fried chicken spots. And locally, the pace has accelerated this year. Over the past decade or so, the crispy, crackly, double-dipped Korean fried chicken has also been slowly taking over America.
As of the beginning of 2020, nearly one in four franchises in South Korea was a fried chicken stop. South Korea now boasts more than 80,000 restaurants, and at least one soap opera, devoted to chimaek: the sacred, double-fisted combo of fried chicken and beer made popular in 2002 during the Korea–Japan World Cup. South Korea is the world’s most dedicated and miraculous laboratory for fried chicken, perhaps the only place in the world as obsessed with breaded poultry as the American South.
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