Press pause on any health kick you might be embroiled in for just a minute. Today is all about the delicious, golden crunch you get from some fabulous deep-frying.
Canberra enjoys Korean food and welcomes Korean pop culture.
At the ANU, a popular K-Pop dance class runs weekly, and a local Korean culture group puts on several events each year. Korean BBQ joints and other eateries continue to pop up. But have you sampled the very latest taste of Korean deliciousness in the city?
Double the taste in fact, as two trendy Korean franchises have been brought together in one storefront: ICG Incredible Chicken and Chunky Town (known as Chung Chun in Korea).
Chunky Town’s range of battered hot dogs on a stick live up to their ‘chunky’ name. While they look like fair food on steroids, chunkys taste surprisingly different. For one thing, this is not your average batter.
Bite through the snap and golden crunch that the rice flour batter produces and you’re suddenly deep in a soft chewy texture that you just want to keep eating.
My mozzarella and sausage chunky is part fresh beignet and part deep-fried mozzarella stick on top; the bottom half is stuffed with a pork and chicken sausage which tastes like an American hot dog. My chunky has a generous sprinkling of sugar on top and this just brings it up to a whole new level of scrumptious. Sweet and crisp meets lava flow of gooey, salty cheese and savoury sausage.
Choose from seven different chunky flavours.
Stick with a basic sausage or plain cheese chunky, or opt for a unique offering. Have your batter encrusted with thin noodles, embedded with potato chunks or infused with squid ink. Select sauces instead of sugar if you like, there’s tomato, mustard, BBQ or aioli.
A chunky is only the beginning of a scrumptious deep-fried adventure here at Chunky Town.
High up on the wall, alongside the Chunky Town menu, ICG’s 12 flavours beckon.
Originating from Gangnam in Seoul, tender chunks of battered chicken are deep-fried into crispy submission and then covered in irresistibly sticky sauces. No pre-cooked chicken here, it’s fried fresh before your eyes.
The Sweet & Spicy is popular. Drizzled in sweet sticky sauce, juicy chicken hides beneath the crisp battered coating. Mouthfuls of salty-sweet crunch.
The Spring Onion variation is fragrant and fresh with spring onion, with the same succulent chicken and lots of satisfying crunch. Its sauce is milder and not as sweet.
You can tell from looking that the spiced chilli chicken brings a bigger hit of chilli heat; its sauce is a darker, deeper red.
Owner Kim Hyunjung says that their biggest selling taste sensation is the snow cheese chicken. A generous dusting of snow cheese covers the crispy-shelled chicken. Not tossed in any sauce, its crunch feels even bigger. Rather than getting dry-clogged in your throat, the snow cheese melts right on your tongue and is irresistibly moreish.
Kim has plenty of experience in delighting local tastebuds with Korean deliciousness. She also owns Chez Kimchi in Civic and Hangari Kimchi in Dickson, as well as two other ICG outlets.
Chunky Town offers a Chicken-Lunch deal: a cup of waffle chips plus five pieces of chicken for $10. From 9:00 pm a cup of waffle chips and chicken is $10. Chunkys start at $6.
Order in person or get your chunkys delivered via EASI. To order contact-free delivery through EASI, download the app from Google Play or the App Store. EASI delivers food from more than 300 local restaurants, as well as groceries from a range of partners. EASI can deliver to within a 50 km radius of any restaurant, so customers in Queanbeyan and the surrounding Canberra region can also enjoy takeaway deliveries through the app.
Stay up to date with EASI through Facebook and Instagram.
Chunky Town is located at 131 City Walk in Civic. It’s open Sunday to Thursday from 12:00 noon to 10:00 pm, and Friday to Saturday from 12:00 noon to 2:00 am.
Follow Chunky Town on Facebook and Instagram.
Original Article published by Michelle Taylor on The RiotACT.