K Soul Chicken — Restaurant in San Francisco

My experience with this spot was just ok. I think the main problem is that my expectation for how things were flavored was not matching with what I thought it should be.

I got a chicken sandwich. It had pretty sweet buns, which was pretty overpowering when in harmony with the sweet battered chicken. There was also an onion ring, which lent a little sweetness, too. Over all, it's a chicken sandwich, I expect it to be pretty savory with some decent acidic components (kimchi, pickles, etc.) The pickles were there on the side and that was the only sliver of "pop" that I saw when I added them. Even the gochujang seemed more sweet than savory to me. I know gochujang is generally kind of sweet, but this seemed too sweet. Maybe in harmony with the bread and the batter, it was too much. Major points deducted because I feel like my chicken was mostly batter and not nearly enough chicken. Side note, I don't usually complain about price, but 2 bucks for extra gochujang seems excessive. Maybe switch the format to be smaller and charge less.

I also got the kimchi fried rice. I think this tasted fine, and on its face, nothing is wrong with it. However, when someone uses the words "fried rice" I tend to think of something very specific, i.e. not this. While I think I understand the goal of this rice, I don't think that name for this rice is accurate. They really should just call it kimchi rice. Yes, it is technically fried, but I feel like all fried rice has, at a bare minimum, egg mixed in. This had nothing but kimchi and a little bit of sea weed shreds and seasame. I think they made it this was to balance the intense flavors of all of the other fried food because it was tastefully bland, slightly acidic, and slightly savory. Nothing to write home about here.

To give them credit, everything seemed extremely clean and very decently presented. No issues with service.

To be honest, I probably won't come back here unless I can find a "proper" savory lunch item...

Tell me why when I first opened the delivery box of galbi boneless chicken and stabbed what I thought was a French fry with my fork, I literally did a chew double-take and removed the tteokbokki from my mouth because my taste buds were so thrown off from what I was expecting. I really should’ve known better, but I’m accustomed to seeing tteokbokki drenched in a gochujang based sauce, so they deceptively resembled fries. To be fair, from this experience, I learned they taste way better dry and seasoned, but I digress.

Onto the main part of the review…

As I’ve written in a couple other reviews this week, I’m “researching” the best Korean fried chicken spots in San Francisco to determine which to order from for an upcoming Friendsgiving. I looked up a ton of options in the city and narrowed them down to a shortlist of 3 spots, this place included. A few things I examined to create my short list were varieties/flavours of chicken, quantity to price ratio, other customer ratings, images of the chicken, and proximity to my neighborhood or deliverability to my friends’ neighborhood where the Friendsgiving will be hosted.

When I took the first bite of K Soul chicken, I knew I’d found a winner. I’m very particular about KFC having spent the last few years living in LA and Orange County, home to copious dedicated KFC restaurants. K Soul’s chicken tastes the most similar to my favourite spots in SoCal. It has the perfect texture and crunch, the meat is neither dry nor greasy, and the umami flavor is on point. They’ve created a perfectly balanced KFC, and that’s why I’ll be taking this to...

Was craving Korean fried chicken and stumbled on this spot. Saw this new restaurant was on DoorDash so we ordered for delivery! We were pleasantly surprised that our food arrived quickly! They definitely packaged things really well, usually when I order wings (especially breaded wings) they arrive very soggy, but these were still very crispy when they arrived!

We got the Galbi Chicken (wings/boneless), the Regular Fried Chicken, potstickers and 2 sides of rice. First off, the rice portions were huge so if you're ordering to-go 1 portion size is good for two people. The fried potstickers were delicious! Really liked how it was extra crispy on the outside and super moist, juicy & delicious on the inside. The regular fried chicken was also moist and juicy on the inside but also had that satisfying crunchy outside. Originally we ordered the galbi chicken with the sauce already on it but they gave us the sauce on the side, and we were actually really glad they did that because we likely would've had soggy chicken. Once you pour the sauce over, close the box then shake it up! The result is a perfectly sauced galbi fried chicken. We really enjoyed the flavors of their sauce and again the chicken was moist/juicy yet still very crispy!

The only downside was we ordered vitamin water and received two random fruit juices instead. But that wasn't really a big deal for us since we actually like the juice flavors. Overall, I really enjoyed their food and will definitely be ordering from here again. I'm looking forward to trying their other flavors, especially the G & J (garlic and...