Bonchon Central Park — Restaurant in Denver

Real deal Holyfield, look no further for excellent Korean fried chicken and other goodies at Bonchon. This place is legit. One of the better eating experiences you’ll ever receive at Bonchon. We visited some family in Denver and wanted to check out some places in the area. I have been to Bonchon many years ago in New York, so when I found out they opened one in Stapleton, I had to take my wife there.

Atmosphere and Service-A+

The place is located near a mall and movie theatre, so if you want to do a little shopping or catch a movie, you should definitely stop by this place before or afterwards. We stopped by on a busy Saturday night. The place was jumping, the music going, and the restaurant had an awesome vibe to it. We waited for less than 5 minutes and were seated promptly. The waitress was on top of her game, she brought us water right away and took very good care of us throughout the night.

Food- A++

Anybody that has read any of my reviews, knows it’s all about the food. In this day and age though, it’s rare to have the trifecta where the food, service, and environment all is on point, but this place truly excelled in all faucets of the game. So after reviewing the menu for several minutes were ordered several dishes. We got the Korean Fried chicken (half and half), Korean Tacos, (spicy chicken) Salmon Avocado Ball, Kimchi bacon Fried rice, and their seasoned fries.

Korean Fried Chicken-So anybody that hasn’t experienced it, you truly are missing out in life. No ranch or bleu cheese is necessary and don’t even ask for it. The crispiness of the chicken and the sauce is a wicked combination, truly a sensation for the taste buds. Once you sample this chicken, it will put any other chicken you’ve had to shame. My wife enjoyed the soy garlic, while I preferred the spicy, but both were outstanding.

Korean Tacos-Very good and tasty, the chicken had a good kick to it and the slaw on the taco, gave it a nice crisp bite to it. Since we are from Arizona and eat tacos all the time, we didn’t expect much, but these tacos were very delicious.

Salmon Avocado Ball-So I was told, they make these fresh to order and you can really tell by the freshness of the ingredients. The salmon had a great flavor and with the avocado and crab with the sauce, it truly is a wonderful combination and assault on the taste buds.

Fried rice with bacon and Kimchi-WOW! This is a sleeper, this dish was amazing. Considering my Asian background, I’ve sampled fried rice all over the country, but I’ve never had bacon and kimchi in it, and it’s an absolute game changer. My wife and I were extremely pleased with this dish and even ordered some to go.

Seasoned Fries-Very good, the fries were straight out of the fryer and had a very good flavor to them. You wouldn’t think that a Korean place would have such great fries, but they blow most burger places out of the water.

In conclusion, like I said before, this place is the real deal. If you want some good food with great customer service, look no further and go to Bonchon, trust me you won’t be disappointed. If you have never had Korean Fried Chicken, please give it a try, you’ll probably never go back to eating regular chicken wings again. I highly recommend this place to my...

When my wife and I saw that they were building a Bonchon here, we excitedly checked to see when it was opening. We went to the soft opening on a whim last night, but we were very disappointed with what we got: the Bonchon price without the Bonchon quality, taste or satisfaction.

The good: -The wait staff has none of the blame. Everyone was friendly attentive and helpful. The potstickers were great, and the radishes cool and tangy, just they say the should be. Table water was also chilled in a neat carafe with classic metal cups. Huge drink menu with a variety of sojus.

The bad: The place was a bit crowded, but it's nothing that rearranging the tables won't fix. The menu has a pretty cover and vibrant photos, but it was honestly very annoying to flip through several pages that could be condensed into just a couple pages. It took time to look through it all even though we basically knew what we wanted already.

The ugly: If you're a chicken restaurant, your worst feature should not be the chicken. Everything about it was wrong. Instead of strips, the meat seemed to be thin square cuts, almost half the size of what I've had at other Bonchons. Because they were so thin, some pieces came out dry. That would've been a problem solved with a little soy sauce... but they had none! What gives??? Anyways, the breading. Because the chicken was so thin and the batter much thicker than normal I wound up with crunchy, oily bites of breading with a skinny bit of chicken in between. Just gross. Finally, they were grievously under-sauced, which could've hid plenty of flaws. Instead, my spicy chicken had next to no spice to it, and my wife's soy garlic had just a hint of garlic. The music was loud, obnoxious, inappropriate and out of place. It'd be great at a club, but I shouldn't have to shout over the music while sitting at a table having dinner. It is also fairly lewd (or at least the videos were) so don't bring your kids. Listen, I know it sounds stereotypical to play kpop at a korean joint, but you really need to lower it and play just about anything else, please!

Overall, we drove half an hour and paid 50 bucks for a handful of potstickers, a "medium" order of nasty "strips" and a bottle of soju. You could get fine steaks for that price, without the noise pollution. I understand this is a soft opening, so I really hope they fix it up. I've wanted this chain to come here, but this is hardly Bonchon. I'll probably pay another visit sometime, but only if I know they fixed their recipe, and if that garbage music is still blaring, we'll just...

First: Food has always been great for dine-in in the past, which is how they get up to a 3 star review for me.

This review is for takeout during the pandemic.

Put in an order at 1pm for 6pm pickup using the Bonchon website. On the drive there at 5:45, I got a text that my order was just put in. On a Friday night. Not good system design to assume only a 15 prep time at dinner on Friday.

I arrived at 6, the nice girl at the front told me it might be another 15 or 20 minutes as they are busy. She says this to everyone. She says this to people who then say back to her "That's what you told me 35 minutes ago when I was here last". I did the same, left for 25 minutes. Came back in, I ask about my order, she says "were busy, maybe 15 or 20 minutes". There are 10 people sitting inside the cramped store, most seem to be delivery drivers.

It appears all the new delivery apps are not integrated into their POS so orders are manually transferred from the service's tablet into their POS. The kitchen was complaining that orders were being entered in duplicate by the lady out front. I suspect but am not sure that my order was not even entered into their system until I asked her about it as she frantically looked across 3 tablets and started typing stuff into the system.

My suggestion. DO NOT USE any of the online ordering apps including the one Bonchon themselves utilizes on their own website. These systems have no idea how busy it is and are not integrated with each other, so they actually can't know this. Sadly the staff doesn't seem to have any idea how busy they are either, so call ahead and press then to be honest on their time estimate. It's called expectation management and they failed at this.

TLDR: Ordered at 1pm for a 6pm pickup, left at 6:58 with my order after being told 3 times that it's be ready in about 15 or 20.

Got home, cole slaw was missing, and the chicken we ordered had almost no sauce on it at all. Overall, a disappointing experience which has convinced me to just find some sauce clone recipes and...