Korean Chicken Chain Still Trying to Fly
Remember our news that BBQ Chicken, Korea’s leading fried chicken chain, was coming to St. Marks Place and aiming to move past McDonald’s in worldwide ubiquity? That goal now seems just a smidge ambitious, because after two months the chicken has yet to hit the olive oil. We were worried the employees had been held back at Chicken University, but it seems the problems lie elsewhere. “They’ve been having trouble with the gas for the chicken,” a counter person tells us. “[The opening] will probably be about two weeks, but they’ve been saying that for about a week so I’m not sure.” In the meantime, there’s always that decidedly not health-conscious BBQ at the end of the block.
Update: Well, there’s this, at least— The BBQ Chicken on Seventh Avenue between 23rd and 24th Streets is up and oiling, as our photographer Melissa Hom discovered during her fried chicken odyssey.
Earlier: Korea’s Favorite Chicken Chain Invades, Bubble-Tea War Is Brewing
Ask a Waiter
RUB’s Jonathan Meyer Cleans Up Your ‘Mystery Napkins’After serving as a barista at Cafe Gitane, Jonathan Meyer joined the opening team as a server at RUB, New York’s pick for Best Barbecue. “It was a huge change,” he tells us. “I didn’t know anything about smoking meats.” (Meyer’s primary love is the theater group he runs, PossEble.) Almost two years later, the Long Island native is informed enough to hold his own against southerners who he says “wear their barbecue knowledge on their sleeve.” We asked him to steer us through the very heated world of Righteous Urban Barbecue.
