The Korean Fried Chicken is now sweeping the world!

Sometimes a simple snack/sandwich/street food becomes trendy.

Great chefs get involved, prices shoot up and other restaurants begin imitating the variations the famous chefs have introduced.

 

Something like that happened to the burger around three decades ago. There had always been easily-available versions of the basic burger (especially after the fast food chains opened thousands of branches) and there had always been the steakhouse burger, the point of which was the beef patty (at the fast food places on the other hand, the patty was cheaply made and was never the point) which was made from top quality meat; not hard to do because most steakhouses have lots of trimmings from their steaks left over which can always be chopped into the meat for a burger patty.

 

   But what the world did not have (and perhaps did not need) was a gourmet burger.

 

   It is significant that the chefs who created this craze were often not American and had not grown up on basic burgers.

 

   Daniel Boulud made a splash at his casual DB Moderne restaurant in New York serving high priced burgers. Gordon Ramsay made a burger with foie gras. Joel Robuchon put sliders (small burgers) on the menu. And soon chefs were putting black truffles and other luxury ingredients on their burgers

 

   That trend is now dead (or at least I hope it is) but it has left its imprint. Even within the fast food sector and at one level above it, there are now restaurants that serve quality burgers and fans speculate about the recipe and proportions of beef cuts that go into the patties.

 

   There is no snob value attached to going to a McDonald’s but now when you go to Shake Shack you can act as though you are in search of a superior gourmet experience because the burger has a cult status.

 

   For a while I thought the hot dog would get the same treatment. In London Karam Sethi of the JKS group opened Bubble Dogs which paired hot dogs with champagne. And in New York Daniel Humm invented the Humm Dog with a bacon-wrapped beef frankfurter and a truffle sauce. (Humm served it at NoMad which he then owned and it turned up all over the world, including, for a while, at a stall Humm opened by the lake in Zurich!)

 

   But the hot dog never took off in quite the same way and I waited to see what the next relatively humble food to get the upmarket treatment would be. My money was on fried chicken which, as regular readers will know, has long been an obsession of mine.

 

   The KFC version, which is probably the best known, harks back to a dish that has long been celebrated in the American South. There are endless regional variations of American fried chicken but none have struck me as being particularly distinctive except for the banana fritters that accompany Chicken Maryland.

 

"There are long lines outside other Korean fried chicken places in New York and champagne has become an integral part of the experience."

   For years I tried to persuade Indian chefs to do fried chicken with our masalas and though their experiments yielded many encouraging results nobody got it quite right till Chintan Pandya invented the perfect Indian fried chicken at Rowdy Rooster the American operation he runs with Roni Mazumdar his long term partner.

 

   I still have high hopes for the global spread of the Rowdy Rooster Chicken but I had also taken a side bet on the international potential of Khao Man Tod, the Thai fried Chicken. I was wrong because Thai restaurants were unwilling to serve it, either in Thailand (where you have to go to a ‘shop’ that specialises in the dish) or abroad. I found some vindication when Seefah opened a successful shop selling the dish in Mumbai a few months ago but sadly, I have lost the global bet.

 

   I was optimistic about the future of karaage, a Japanese fried chicken dish as well but it is now increasingly clear that much of the world prefers to look at Japanese food only through the prism of sushi. Japan’s many delicious snack foods never seem to travel well.

 

   However I have been delighted to see that another version of Fried Chicken is now sweeping the world. This Korean Fried Chicken which beats most other versions because of the crisp texture of the batter, which comes from double-frying the chicken at two different temperatures.

 

   In New York COQODAQ, from the owners of the super-hot Korean steakhouse Cote is a craze because it pairs fried chicken with champagne arguing that “in Korea drinking bubbly beverages with fried chicken is part of the culture.”

 

   This may well be true but the ‘bubbly beverages’ most Koreans drink with fried chicken do not include Krug champagne. But then I guess Coca Cola does not have the same glamour as champagne though it is a ‘bubbly beverage’ more commonly drunk with fried chicken. Besides, as much as I want to sneer at the pretension of pairing champagne with such a simple and relatively inexpensive dish, the truth is that champagne does go well with all batter-fried foods because it has the acid to cut through the fried texture.

 

   COQODAQ is not the only place to take this formula forward. There are long lines outside other Korean fried chicken places in New York and champagne has become an integral part of the experience.

 

   So, bizarrely enough, has caviar. One of the hottest global food trends at the moment is to top your fried chicken with caviar. I have to say that I don’t quite see how it works but perhaps I am just too much of a purist or just have not tried it enough

 

   In a sense it is the same principle as Daniel Boulud’s burger. He took a humble dish and elevated it with such luxury ingredients as truffles. Here the Koreans are using caviar to get the same effect.

 

   It’s not exactly a new idea. David Chang (also Korean) used to do it at Momofuku before the newer Korean places turned it into a rage. But now, I think it will spread rapidly throughout the world.

 

   So, the next time you go to a trendy restaurant in Mumbai or Delhi don’t be surprised if fried chicken and caviar turns up on the menu. Or if you are feeling extravagant (caviar is now easily available in India’s big cities and prices are lower than they have ever been in real inflation-adjusted terms) then just buy fried chicken from KFC, (if you can’t find a Korean chicken place near you; they are opening up all over India) put a little sour cream on it and top the cream with caviar. (Champagne is not essential!)

 

   It sounds ridiculously luxurious but it’s probably cheaper than it would be to have dinner at a five star hotel restaurant. Plus you don’t have to dress up and it doesn’t matter if the cream gives you an off-white moustache; nobody will be looking at the mess you make!

 

   Or you can do it my way and mainline. Just eat the chicken and don’t worry about the garnish or the ‘bubbly beverage!’