Korean-American Fried Chicken Sandwich

Bonchon opened a small first US shop in Fort Lee, New Jersey, in 2006, ran a single-location Korean-fried-chicken pickup counter on the Bergen County side of the George Washington Bridge through the late 2000s, and broke nationally through Manhattan, Queens, and Los Angeles by 2012, with a hundred-plus US stores by the late 2010s. The shop's double-fried boneless thigh, brushed in either the soy-garlic glaze or the red gochujang sauce, was a stand-alone snack platter from the open. By the mid-2010s the Korean-American sandwich form for that same fillet on a soft toasted bun had a presence at Bonchon, at Pelicana, at Mono Mono, and at the independent counters that followed them from Flushing to Koreatown LA. The chicken-sandwich war that the August 2019 Popeyes launch lit across American counters caught the Korean-American category mid-rise and folded it into the same market.

The crust is the engineering. A fillet is fried once at low heat. The fillet is rested off the heat. The fillet is fried again at high heat. The second fry drives off the surface moisture. The shell sets thin and glassy.

The glaze is brushed or tossed after the second fry. A red sauce built on gochujang fermented chili paste with sugar, garlic, ginger, soy, and a little corn syrup is reduced in a pan until it holds its shape on a spoon, then either brushed across the fillet with a silicone brush or tossed through it in a metal bowl; the soy-garlic version runs soy sauce, mirin, sugar, garlic, and corn syrup reduced to the same brushable body. Either lacquer clings as a glossy sheet because the double-fried shell is hard enough to hold the sauce on its surface rather than absorbing it. The build is balanced against the sweetness: a soft brioche or potato bun whose faint sugar runs with the lacquer; a tangle of kimchi slaw with gochugaru and rice vinegar to cut the sweet; pickled daikon mu, the bright crisp white radish Korean fried-chicken shops serve alongside every plate, for the cold acidic snap a glazed fillet otherwise has none of.

The build fails on shell integrity. A glaze brushed onto a still-wet crust slides off the fillet as the sandwich is held; a glaze laid on too thick drips down past the bun seam and softens the shell from below. A first fry held too long produces a thick floury layer the brushed sauce cannot grip, and a second fry rushed at a low temperature leaves moisture inside the breading that vents into the bun. A bun toasted past pale gold stiffens against the soft glazed fillet. A kimchi slaw left to sit before assembly leeches red liquor into the bun heel and tears the bread at the first squeeze.

Open the takeaway box at a Bonchon counter and the smell off the bun is sesame and seared garlic, with a sweet caramelised soy note pushing through the lid steam. The fillet sits dark glossy red or burnished mahogany under a pale brioche dome, the kimchi slaw bleeding faint red liquor at the seam, two pink-white discs of pickled daikon peeking out the side. The first bite snaps audibly through the lacquered shell before the teeth reach the breast, the crackle louder than a southern fried crust, the gochujang heat landing first with a slow burn that settles in the back of the throat after the swallow. The kimchi pulls cold and sour-funky against the warm fillet in the second beat. A spike of garlic from the soy glaze comes through last and lingers.

The Korean-American chicken-sandwich vocabulary is short and brand-anchored. Soy-garlic or red is the first question at a Bonchon counter, the same question the chain asks of its bone-in plates. Half-and-half is the standing compromise on both sandwiches and platters, splitting the fillet's top face between the two house glazes. At the Manhattan Coqodaq shop, the chicken-and-caviar platter and the boneless sandwich on the menu both ride the same double-fried shell that Bonchon set as the chain category twenty years before. The 2024 chicken-sandwich-war crossover was specifically the Korean-American kitchens, Bonchon among them, adding chicken sandwiches at scale to compete with the Popeyes-and-Chick-fil-A category the August 2019 launch had defined. The fast-casual menu line on Korean fried-chicken counters has been a permanent fixture since around 2018 to 2020.

The variants stay inside the double-fried frame. The soy-garlic and the gochujang glazes are the two settled poles, and a half-and-half option splits the fillet between them. A snowing-cheese version dusts the glazed fillet in powdered parmesan as the sandwich is closed, a salty finishing detail that runs through the wider Korean fried-chicken trade as well. A scallion-and-sesame build leans savoury and drops the slaw for fresh aromatics. The Kyochon chicken sandwich, the Korean-chain build that brushes the glaze on a thin double-fried fillet rather than tossing it, is the parent-brand reading of the same fillet and is written up on its own. The Nashville hot chicken sandwich, with spiced cayenne oil lacquered over fried chicken under pickles on white bread, and the bun-format Buffalo chicken sandwich are the two American regional answers to carrying an aggressive sauce on a fried fillet and are each written up on their own.

Origin and history

The double-fried Korean fried chicken style was popularised in South Korea through the 1980s. Pelicana opened in Daejeon in 1982 and ran a sweet-spicy red glaze across bone-in pieces; Kyochon opened in the city of Gumi in 1991 and made the brushed soy-garlic glaze its signature. The double-fry technique, two-stage frying with a rest in between for shell thinness, was the standing industry method by the early 1990s and the technical foundation under both house glazes.

The American expansion started at the New York metropolitan diaspora. Bonchon was founded in Busan, South Korea, in 2002 and opened its first US shop in Fort Lee, New Jersey, in 2006 under franchisee Jinduk Sur, with a Koreatown Manhattan location following on West 32nd Street in 2007. Mono Mono opened on West 23rd Street in 2014. The 2010s saw the chain category grow to a hundred-plus US locations and the broader Korean-fried-chicken trade settle into a permanent menu fixture across Koreatowns in New York, Los Angeles, Atlanta, and Houston. The boneless sandwich form on a soft toasted bun followed the chain expansion through the second half of the 2010s as independent Korean-American kitchens added the sandwich to their menus alongside the bone-in plates.

The chicken-sandwich war launched by the Popeyes Classic Chicken Sandwich on 12 August 2019 reset the American chicken-sandwich market. The Korean-American kitchens entered the new chain-category landscape with their double-fried sandwich through 2019 to 2021, with Bonchon adding the standardised boneless sandwich to its US menu in 2020 and the higher-end shops following. Coqodaq, the chef Simon Kim and Hand Hospitality fine-dining Korean fried-chicken room with a chicken-and-caviar platter, opened at 8 West 18th Street in NoMad Manhattan in February 2024.