Chennai| Try K-Drama fried chicken, and more Korean street food at Samchon Bunsik

MetroPlus gets a first look at Chennai’s newest Korean restaurant Samchon Bunsik, serving street food classics from Seoul like fried chicken, kimbap, corndogs and tteokbokki

Samchon Bunsik, the latest addition to Chennai’s ever-growing Korean food scene, is surprisingly packed on a midweek afternoon. While one table is occupied by three Korean women having a leisurely lunch, three tables have been joined together for a large group of Indians and Koreans. This is a promising sign, if anything.

Kim Myung-soo and Kim Hyo-jin, a couple from South Korea, moved to India with the hope of setting up set up a restaurant nearly a year ago, and it was not long before they fell in love with Chennai. Having run a corndog place back home , they came with experience as well. 

“In Korea, it is difficult for older people to start and establish a business given the number of young people who have thriving establishments. I didn’t want to sit at home for the next 20 or 30 years and was keen on travelling to India to set up a business, and also help the underprivileged,” says Myung-soo. He is the Samchon, or uncle of Samchon Bunsik. Bunsik is a generic term used to refer to inexpensive dishes that make up street food.   “I am excited to show people different kinds of Korean street food, or bunsik,” Hyo-jin says. 

Chennai’s well-known Korean restaurants have a gourmand spread, with grilled meats and an extensive selection of dishes. At Samchon Bunsik however, things are a lot more simple and come at a price point that is a lot easier on the wallet as well.

The K-Drama staple fried chicken is our first order of business, and we try three variants – the Samchon special chicken, yang-nyeom or a spicy and sweet chicken, and the honey chicken, which is a sweet and crispy chicken that comes with a special sauce. While there is an option to order a dipping sauce, the fried chicken, especially the Samchon special variant, comes so well seasoned that it works best by itself. The crunch is on point, and the chicken is succulent and well-cooked. 

While you could make this a part of your main course with the fried chicken rice bowls, we move onto the dal-galbi deopbap, a rice bowl with spicy chilli paste chicken. Cooked with slivers of carrot and spring onion, the chicken on hot rice here makes for the perfect comfort meal. For a spice fiend like me, the spice levels are not too intimidating, and actually leans more into hot-and-sweet territory. 

The fuss-free, usual suspects all find a place on the menu – corndogs, kimbap, kimchi fried rice, japchae or glass noodles, and kimchi jeon or kimchi pancakes. Most dishes come with vegetarian and non-vegetarian options, and the restaurant even has fried cauliflower seasoned with the flavour options available for their fried chicken. Myung-soo says that they are also planning on introducing a paneer variant, something their trial diners seemed to love.