Sembawang Road is blessed with clusters of 2-storey shophouses that stand apart from the numerous contained shopping centres we have in Singapore and with growing interest in having their business in a unique brick and mortar environment, food operators have been making inroads to such shophouses, despite the inconvenience and short supply of parking for motor vehicles.
A new entrant that took over the space from a Chinese restaurant would be Seoul Chicken Korean Restaurant - those familiar with the popular Chong Pang Nasi Lemak shop would not have missed Seoul Chicken as they resided at literally each end of the row of shophouses.
Interior design was simple, non-fanciful yet gave me the impression of dining in a typical restaurant at Korea that served the mass population.
It's actually a full fledged Korean restaurant and having the word "chicken" on its signboard gave people the wrong assumption that it's going to be another "fried chicken" joint in the market. I patronised thinking it's fried chicken and it's fried chicken i must have!
Side Dishes
A mainstay for most decent Korean restaurants - there were six placed on our table; from the usual kimchi, radishes, beansprouts, cucumbers, beancurd and omelette.
I had the most hope for the omelette which turned out to be relatively normal. Put it this way, i am now quite a master of fried omelette after i moved out of my parents' place.
My personal favourites would be the sourish, crunchy kimchi, the cool, crisp cucumber and the inari-like fried beancurd.
Seafood Pancake
In spite of the high pricing, i simply couldn't resist ordering Korean pancakes. As i am with Alex, spicy kimchi pancake was a no-go and had to settle with the seafood version. Nevertheless, i heard from friends that kimchi pancake is utterly easy to make!
Now coming back to the seafood pancake at Seoul Chicken, the batter was thin, lightly seasoned and fried to a crisp. I was most impressed with the seafood (prawns, squids etc) as the chef was generous with them (rightfully so for the price i am paying) and they tasted fresh!
The lightly seasoned batter i mentioned earlier had resulted in a rather bland outcome; the waitress had reminded me to dip the pancake into the sauce in the middle and boy was she right! There was a tingling spicy aftertaste but it did its job by enhancing the palatability of the pancake.
Fried Chicken with Sweet Soy Sauce
With five pieces of korean style crispy fried chicken that are not our usually smaller winglets / drumlets, i can roughly tell at one look that the batter on the skin would be too thick for my liking.
The truth was as predicted although the appetising sweet soy sauce marination wasn't just reserved for the batter; it can be felt even as i tore through the juicy chicken meat!
Dessert
Like the side dishes, dessert would be provided even though it was less practiced by Korean restaurants. In our case, it was a small bowl of fruit cocktail served in a milky liquid that suspiciously like Calpis!
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I wasn't blown away by the fried chicken and i guess the operator did sense it as she insisted that i should try the BBQ in the future. Now, i love Korean BBQ and to me, that's a dare. Should it fail to impress me, i would definitely pen down my truthful review in this blog.
Location
435 Sembawang Road,
Singapore 758398
Map
As above.
Facebook Page
Pricing
Side Dishes - Complimentary
Seafood Pancake - S$19.90
Fried Chicken with Sweet Soy Sauce - S$21.90
Dessert - Complimentary
(Subject to GST)