CheeMc, 310 Walworth Road, London SE17 (020 7358 6926). Meal for two, including drinks and service: £35
The menu at CheeMc, a small Korean restaurant a mile down the road from the delightful building site which is London’s Elephant and Castle, is long. It includes a list of dishes featuring soondae, a traditional kind of Korean black pudding, of which I know absolutely nothing. There’s also a bunch of things using jokbal, which are marinated ham hocks and sound fabulous, but again I can’t tell you anything about them. Partly this is because, dependent on what time of day it is and which cook happens to be in the kitchen, not all of the menu is available all the time. And partly this is because my interest lay elsewhere – namely with the lengthy list of Korean fried chicken dishes.
Yes, this week I am reviewing a south London fried chicken shop. Oh but what chicken. Korean fried chicken is hot right now, especially if you go for the hardcore stuff, slathered in a chilli sauce the colour of the outflow from a severed jugular and finished with a sprinkle of sesame seeds. It’s defined by a much crisper, harder coating than the variety from the American south, sometimes achieved through a double-fry.
I’ve tried many versions over the past couple of years, from those at Flesh and Buns and Shackfuyu through to the ones at Kurobuta and Jinjuu. I’ve eaten a sanitised version at the Bonchon chain in New York, where you can choose which bit of the wing you want, and unwieldy, unjointed versions from London street food vans which were frankly more trouble than they were worth.
It would be intriguing to track the spread of a food trend of this sort as epidemiologists do a virus. Who was it who first spotted a single menu item that deserved to be lifted out of the context of its original Korean restaurant menu? Who first sourced a recipe and how did that get passed on, from hand to hand, becoming a little disfigured at each pass, a little less itself, at each turn? Until what ended up on the plate was merely something akin to KFC with a shameless squirt of sriracha chilli sauce, with a side of posturing and bravado and beards?
Don’t get me wrong. I am not, and never have been, an authenticity queen. All recipes are invented at one point or another, and “authentic” really isn’t the same as “good”. Many great recipes build their own origin myths. For example we love the idea that cassoulet and coq au vin are the true gastronomic voice of the French peasantry; that the word paysanne represents a whole way of life expressed through the contents of the blackened cooking pot of some bent-backed farmer’s wife in the Lot Valley. In truth, as with all peasantry, the French version was living on a meagre diet of millet in the 18th and 19th centuries when these dishes were codified by a cadre of cosmopolitan chefs in Paris. But it suits us to imbue them with a certain credibility, and anyway the passage of time hides a multitude of sins.
So I’m not going to tell you that the Korean fried chicken at CheeMc is the real thing, because I’ve never been to Korea and what the hell do I know? But I will tell you that it’s the best I’ve ever tried and that it’s good value. Then again, you’re not paying for frills. There’s a laminate-wood floor and wallpaper of fake bare bricks. There’s a counter by the door for takeaways and a semi-open kitchen at the other end. As you arrive, the one chirpy Korean waitress will tell you which bits of the menu are available. As far as I can tell the chicken always is. She’ll also mention it’s cash only.
There are a dozen types (some boneless in cream sauces). We tried five of the fried. Part of the pleasure is that these are not identical portions of wings or legs, which forces you to fret about how many limbs these modified animals had. They are birds hacked into manageable pieces. A whole chicken is £17.50. For £18.50 you can have half of one and half of another. All come with a lightly dressed salad, including the odd mizuna leaf to give an aromatic kick, plus, on the side, crunchy cubes of sweet pickled white radish.
Each arrives with a small chrome bucket for bones, and tongs with which (if you have any manners) you are meant to hold the pieces of chicken, mostly because they are so damn hot straight out of the fryer. The classic sets the agenda: perfect pieces of fried chicken with a gloriously crunchy batter. It’s unseasoned but comes with salt on the side. For the pre-seasoned variety there’s the sweet soy chicken, which has been given a good basting in the liquor before being fried to a slightly darker shade of golden. Both are greaseless.
Next come the two chilli chickens. The point about the heavier crisp overcoat is that it can stand being drenched and still crunch. The yangnyum, or sweet chilli chicken, tempers the heat with sugariness. It’s for those who don’t want their scalp to sweat. The serious stuff is the goochoo, which is a hit of fire and salt and all the good things. Our waitress says: “Don’t cry” as she delivers it, but it’s really not one of those pointless macho challenges. You can still taste hen through the full-frontal assault. Finally we try the maneul, or garlic chicken – the same fried chicken covered in garlic sauce and covered with thick slices of toasted garlic. Eat this with a very close friend and then spend the next two days in their company.
We try a couple of other things. Tuimary are deep-fried rolls of seaweed filled with the satisfying crunch of glass noodles. There are gyoza-like chicken dumplings and large discs of “fish cake” like a giant, geometrically patterned prawn cracker, deep-fried to a sweet-salt golden crunch. Those same “cakes” also turn up simmered and slippery, like slices of a robust tofu, in a bowl of boiling hot fish soup which we order for the table. It turns out to be the perfect addition, a sip of the light dashi-style fish broth cutting through the hit of salt and chilli and garlic from the chicken.
And that’s it. No frills, fabulous fried Korean chicken which will stay on your breath and, if you’re anything like me, your shirt for days. Incidentally, if you fancy dessert there’s an ice cream parlour across the road. You’re welcome.
Jay’s news bites
■ Of all the other takes on Korean fried chicken I’ve tried, the best has been at Shackfuyu, a sibling of Bone Daddies. The restaurant, in London’s Old Compton Street, was initially a pop-up but is about to reopen as a permanent site. The Korean wings are a good combo of salt, sweet and chilli. Also try the roast sweetcorn with lime butter, and the sticky lamb ribs with pickled plum miso glaze (bonedaddies.com/shackfuyu).
■ Talking of lamb ribs, they are clearly going to be the meat cut of the season. Recipes feature in both Simply Nigella – with nigella seeds and cumin – and Tom Kerridge’s new one, Tom’s Table – with black treacle. At around £6 a kilo they are good value.
■ Seriously spendy Christmas extravagance: Chinese restaurant Hutong, up London’s Shard, is well known for its Peking duck. From 30 November for a month it will also be offering whole aromatic goose, with butterfly buns, black pepper sauce and plum sauce. It costs £95, serves five or more and must be ordered when booking (hutong.co.uk).
Email Jay at jay.rayner@observer.co.uk
Follow Jay on Twitter @jayrayner1
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