Hyodo Chicken — Restaurant in Seoul

Fried chicken slaps you in the face with how good it is.

We tried three types: the anchovy fish, the spicy, and the perilla-honey tomahawk. The first two were already the best chicken I've had, excluding how good "The Bird" in San Francisco used to be. But the periolla-honey tomahawk was a quasi-religious experience. We tried as many fried chicken places in korea as we could, and we thought we would leave with Kkanbu being #1. But this blew it out of the water.

The perilla chicken is so perfectly marinated longer than would make sense for other recipes, but the outside is perfectly tuned for it. The inside is slimy and gooey as the proteins start dissolving into a thick meat slurry. It would be kinda gross in any other recipe, but the texture and ingredients are perfectly aligned to make it multiplicatively good instead. I'll have to experiment to figure out how they made that outside honey-perilla coating, because it's excellent while dry but evolves positively in your mouth to the perfect slightly-gummy-but-sugar-dissolving texture. It doesn't cake unpleasantly to a crevice in your mouth like injeolmi. Perhaps a little sweet for the non-Korea palate, but just straight up excellent anyway. You're not disappointed after a few minutes, as the moistness of the chicken gets absorbed into the powder. It instead becomes a gummy QQ caramel that tastes different from the fresh but still like it's "intended" and right.

I thought I had a great marinated and grilled chicken recipe that treated the chicken right as an ingredient who needed to be killed. Now after this I feel like I can't make it until I get better.

Really excellent chicken.

We arrived before 7pm on a Friday and were immediately seated. Seemed to fill up with a line shortly thereafter. Informal, relaxed atmosphere and prompt...

I had some of the best fried chicken of my life here! We dined as a couple, opting for the half and half option so we could try both the soy sauce and spicy flavours.

Both were absolutely delicious, with the exterior having a good crunch while the inside meat was juicy and tender. Although we didn’t get boneless, every piece was still large and meaty, not just full of bone and breading. We also liked the addition of peppers and anchovies with the soy sauce chicken and lotus root slices with the spicy chicken. The combos were unique and perfectly paired.

One plate of chicken is more than enough to feed 2 people, the portion is excellent value for the price. They also provide complimentary peanuts and pickled daikon, which is great for cutting through the fat in between eating so much deep fried foods. That being said, the chicken is not overly greasy at all nor was the colour too dark, so you know they’re not frying in oil that is...

Since the Hannam branch closed, bot many of these left in Seoul. The shop in Dosan doesn't have many seats and can be filled real quickly. A piblic toilet is available nearby. They're used to tourist customers and they have an English menu and helpful with orders. Half-half is possible on specific kinds, one portion is perfect for 2 people, and the prices are in the average range of chicken in Seoul. There are maaaany chicken places and chains in Korea, so it's really not easy to stand out and make the fried chicken special, but Hyodo chicken really is very good - especially their fried toppings like fried & sauced lotus, fried peppers, fried anchovies 🤩 Totally worth a try if you're a fan of Korean...