Seocho-Dong Incredible Chicken moved to the Chinese side of Eastwood in late-2020, making it a much more spacious and convenient location that previously.
2021
For D’s birthday, we picked up 1.5 Original Fried Chickens ($17.00 for half, $32.00 for whole) to share between the four of us. We opted out of boneless chicken because bone-in chicken seems to retain its juiciness better. The chicken is fried fresh to order so there’s a twenty-minute wait to receive the order. Also as we were getting take away, we wanted to give the chicken pieces the best chance of staying crispy and so opted to get the sauces on the side instead of ordering one of the flavoured chickens on the menu.
As expected, the chicken was incredibly crispy and juicy, even after a good half an hour. The crispiness and batter ratio sits in between the over battered pieces from KFC and the thin batter from Nene Chicken, which we love.
For sauces ($2.00 each), we first went with our long time favourite: Spring Onion, which is a wasabi flavoured sweet soy and gave just a hint of heat, with a balanced sweetness to the savoury base.
The second is the Spicy Soy, which tasted exactly as one would expect but lacked the complexity of the former.
And finally, this is the Spicy Chilli, which tasted like a spicy tonkatsu sauce with its thicker consistency and sweetness, and hints of Worcestshire.
We’re glad to reaffirm Seocho-Dong Incredible Chicken as a firm contender for Korean fried chicken, or fried chicken generally. Next time, though, we’d probably stick with just the Spring Onion sauce.
2022
We departed from our usual habit of ordering fried chicken for takeaway from Seocho-Dong Incredible Chicken, and ate in to try the other non-fried chicken dishes on their menu.
We ordered four side dishes (clockwise from top right): pasta salad, beancurd skin, pickled radish and kimchi. The pickled radish was our favourite, with the others not being particularly noteworthy.
We ordered two half chickens (photo shows single half) in spring onion sauce (left, essentially wasabi soy with spring onion on the side (not pictured) and garlic soy (right). These were our favourite sauces, having cycled through most of the alternatives previously. We enjoyed the sauce on the side as it kept the chicken crispy and also allowed us to pick up the amount of sauce as desired. When served pre-sauced, the chicken lost some of its crispness and the sauce became overwhelming.
This is Seafood Spicy Rice Cake ($19.00). The seafood-based sauce had a bold, sweat-inducing spiciness, yet retained the flavour of the seafood in both the sauce and the variety (2x mussels, squid, fish cake). While the tteokbokki was tender with the perfect bounce on the teeth and carried the spicy sauce very well, the seafood was overcooked. We ordered this dish to try tteokbokki and were sufficiently impressed to try it again but perhaps in a smaller portion as the density of the rice cakes became overwhelming after a few.
For something light, I tried the Young Radish Kimchi Chilled Noodles ($16.00). The kimchi greens provided a gentle heat to the chilled broth, while the radish was tender and lightly pickled. Eaten together with the hard-boiled egg, the noodles soaked up the kimchi broth and delivered an addictive chewy al dente mouthfeel. This was a light dish, yet satisfying in both flavour and mouthfeel.
To supplement the fried chicken, this was the Beef Short Ribs on Sizzling Plate ($17.00, includes a bowl of steamed rice). While the sauce was flavourful and sticky, the beef itself was again a bit tough and overcooked.
Finally, this was the Seafood Pancake ($17.00). We enjoy the crisp lightness of the pancake’s exterior but found the interior underwhelming with batter making up most of the pancake, followed by some leeks and a smattering of seafood. We’ve yet to find a seafood pancake that improved upon on first from Mirac Korean Restaurant, which featured a huge amount of seafood held together with just enough batter for structure.
Overall, we remain fans of the fried chicken here but would pass on the other dishes on offer.
Seocho-Dong Incredible Chicken is located at Shop8/1-5 Glen St, Eastwood NSW 2122.