Savor Scout › Food guides › Korean fried chicken
How to find good Korean fried chicken
Korean fried chicken is fried twice, which gives it a thin, glassy crust that stays crisp under a sticky glaze. It is a late-night, beer-and-chicken (chimaek) food, and the best places take their time.
Find Korean fried chicken near you →
What separates a good one from a bad one
- Double frying — Fried once, rested, then fried again. The crust is thin, crackly and not greasy.
- A glaze that coats without drowning — Yangnyeom — sweet, spicy, garlicky gochujang sauce — should cling and stay sticky, not pool.
- Soy garlic done well — The less spicy option, glossy and savoury.
- Pickled radish cubes — Chikin-mu — cold, sweet-sour radish served alongside. Essential for balance.
- A wait — Real Korean fried chicken takes twenty to thirty minutes. A place that serves it in five has pre-fried it.
What to order
- Half-and-half — Half yangnyeom, half soy garlic.
- Wings or drumsticks — Bone-in is better.
- Plain fried (huraideu) — To judge the crust.
- Tteokbokki — On the side.
- Beer — The classic pairing.
Where to find Korean fried chicken
Korean fried chicken is mostly found at Korean restaurants, so that is where to look. Open listings put 4,292 of them across the US, and these are the cities and campuses with the most.
Cities with the most
Los Angeles, CA 284 New York, NY 211 Las Vegas, NV 69 Chicago, IL 67 Honolulu, HI 66 San Francisco, CA 61 Buena Park, CA 57 Houston, TX 48
Campuses with the most within a mile
Baruch 107 Touro University 97 FIT 95 The Graduate Center 95 New School University 84 NYU 51
A few to start with
- Seoul Sausage Company — Los Angeles, CA
236 S Los Angeles St, Los Angeles - KOBA Korean BBQ — New York, NY
136 William St, New York - KIO Korean Fried Chicken — Las Vegas, NV
809 N Main St, Las Vegas - Lai Lai Korean Express — Chicago, IL
330 S Wells St, Chicago - My BBQ — Honolulu, HI
1001 Bishop St, Honolulu - Jang — San Francisco, CA
22 Franklin St, San Francisco
Counts are listings in Overture Maps open data (September 2026), counted by the town in each address. Independent places only in the examples above, and they are a starting point rather than a ranking.
How Savor Scout looks for it
The search reads for double-fried, yangnyeom, soy garlic and pickled radish, and favours specialist chicken shops over Korean restaurants that offer chicken as one item.
Find Korean fried chicken near you →
Looking in a particular city?
Each of these opens Savor Scout with the location already set, so you can say what you want and it searches from there. It covers 1,000 US cities in total — these are simply the largest.
- New York, NY
- Los Angeles, CA
- Chicago, IL
- Houston, TX
- Philadelphia, PA
- Phoenix, AZ
- San Antonio, TX
- San Diego, CA
- Dallas, TX
- San Jose, CA
- Austin, TX
- Indianapolis, IN
- Jacksonville, FL
- San Francisco, CA
- Columbus, OH
- Charlotte, NC
- Fort Worth, TX
- Detroit, MI
- El Paso, TX
- Memphis, TN
- Seattle, WA
- Denver, CO
- Washington, DC
- Boston, MA
- Nashville, TN
- Baltimore, MD
- Oklahoma City, OK
- Louisville, KY
- Portland, OR
- Las Vegas, NV
- Milwaukee, WI
- Albuquerque, NM
- Tucson, AZ
- Fresno, CA
- Sacramento, CA
- Long Beach, CA
- Kansas City, MO
- Mesa, AZ
- Virginia Beach, VA
- Atlanta, GA
- Colorado Springs, CO
- Omaha, NE
- Raleigh, NC
- Miami, FL
- Oakland, CA
- Minneapolis, MN
- Tulsa, OK
- Cleveland, OH
- Wichita, KS
- Arlington, TX
- New Orleans, LA
- Bakersfield, CA
- Tampa, FL
- Honolulu, HI
- Aurora, CO
- Anaheim, CA
- Santa Ana, CA
- St. Louis, MO
- Riverside, CA
- Corpus Christi, TX
Related food guides
wings, fried chicken, Korean food