Chi Maek Korean Fried Chicken — Restaurant in Coon Rapids

My wife and I visited Chi Maek, excited to have a Korean chicken and beer place nearby. As of early January, they do not serve beer, but they do have lots of chicken options.

Food: We ordered the drumsticks, house pickles, rice, and tofu bibimbap. The house pickles were good. The rice was lower quality jasmine rice, similar to that at a Chinese take out. The chicken had good crisp and the spicy sauce had excellent flavor and was spicy. However, the drumsticks were large and assumedly from fast growing broiler chickens, so they were white meant and the meat felt rubbery. I would much prefer the smaller, more flavor drumsticks that generally come from slower growing chickens. By wife said the bibimbap was okay, using the same rice and packaged fried tofu.

Service: Staff was attentive, friendly, and polite. I really hope this new restaurant does well!

The staff was understandably nervous on the opening day. However, this lead to a lot of extra staff staying at the front, which made my wife and I feel watched as we ate.

Atmosphere: The restaurant has nice furniture and feels clean, albeit a bit sparse.

The lighting in the restaurant is odd, being very bright at the counter and very dark at the edges, which gives the feeling of being on stage or of the booths being closed. Evening out the lighting more would...

Chi Maek is my go-to Asian restaurant. The food is simply delicious, and the service is always impeccable. However, the last time my dad and I visited, the service truly went above and beyond. My dad is a very particular eater due to his dietary restrictions, which can sometimes make it challenging to wait on him. The owner, Kevin came to wait on my dad, and was determined to make our experience memorable, thus the review.

Kevin, who used to be a chef and the owner of a large buffet in Canada, personally waited on my dad. He carefully and patiently took my dad’s order, ensuring that it met his specific dietary needs. Then, he went back to the kitchen and personally prepared the dish, making sure it was cooked to perfection even thought he had not cooked himself in a long time.

When the food arrived, it was just as my dad had requested, and it was even more delicious than I had imagined. Kevin’s attention to detail and his genuine care for our dining experience were truly remarkable.

Your restaurant is truly exceptional, and you deserve more than just five stars in every category. May God bless you and prosper you, for being such a...

The service here is great. I really wish we could enjoy the food. I'm used to getting chicken wings at another very popular Korean restaurant and I was incredibly excited when this restaurant opened, but I'm sad to say I did not like it. We tried the week they opened and found the chicken wings to be overbreaded, kind of oily, and I got a bit of cornstarch or something taste too. The sauce was okay, but not spectacular. We ended up throwing a lot of our 30 piece box away. After much debating with the family we tried again recently hoping it was just because they'd just opened that things didn't taste as great the 1st time, this time also getting the chicken thighs in addition to wings and it was even more disappointing. The thighs had no flavor whatsoever, not even salt and there was barely any sauce on them or the wings so the breading was dry for the most part. We ended up adding ketchup and Sriracha to make them edible, we threw away most of it then too. I'll just continue driving to Maple Grove to go to the other place. I hope this store's chicken wings and thighs improve in the future, perhaps they can visit other places...