Test Driving Oh Gee - award-winning Korean fried chicken in Shoreditch

Catherine Hanly 01 October 2024

The 101 potato crispy chicken bun with hot honey (£14)

Is this the award-winning Korean fried chicken?

If you mean the residency by South Korean chef Byung Tae Ahn at the Hoxton in Shoreditch, then yes. Ahn won the Netflix cooking show K-Chicken War, and from that opened a restaurant chain in New Jersey, 101 Chicken, focusing on said chicken. Now he's in London for the autumn, introducing Londoners to the joys of great KFC.

So it's here for a while then?

The residency started as a three-month affair but has now been extended to the end of 2024.

Where is it?

You'll find it taking over the ground floor restaurant space at the Hoxton in the evenings (by day this is run by Eggbreak). So the nearest tube would be Old Street, but it's also close to Shoreditch High Street overground.

The Hoxton Grill where the residency is taking over

Where's a good place to meet for a drink first?

In this part of town, you're not short on bars and in our humble opinion Swift would be your best bet.

Of course, you could always have drinks here at Oh Gee, because they do make quite a thing of them. There's a giant light-up tower Watermelon Sugar cocktail, a Poktan-ju which involves a shot of Soju being dropped into a lager and then there's this...

The 3x Spicy Marg Fire Extinguisher (£55 for six people) featuring Altos Plata Tequila, JINRO Chamisul peach, gochujang, lime, agave and spicy salt.

So what kind of chicken do they do here?

What you really ought to try is Ahn's award-winning potato crisp chicken. Choose between a whole bird (12 pieces) or half (six pieces). There are also various meal deals on offer if you want to combine this with some of the buns, sides or desserts. If you're after something different there's a range of other styles of chicken from soy honey and hot & spicy to garlic crumble.

This was the Oh Gee Meal Deal for two, which includes half a bird, two buns, fries, two dips and two soft serves for £55. Based on what we had, we'd suggest focusing more on the chicken than the buns - that potato crisp coating definitely deserves its hype.

Presumably, there's more than just fried chicken on the menu?

The chicken is the main attraction but yes there are appetisers and sides as well as a few larger dishes like a Galbi Jjim beef shin lasagne and a guldak spicy pot noodle (skewers of ribeye steak with a bulgogi glaze).

Prawn toast (£6) - fat little triangles of prawn toast served with Korean chilli mayo

Fried stuffed green pepper (£4), stuffed with spicy chicken and served with a yuzu range sauce for dipping

Anything at all for vegetarians?

This is 2024 London, so of course there is. And we'd be remiss if we didn't say that the Korean fried cauliflower was amazing and (whisper it) better than one of the chicken burgers we tried).

No Cluck Korean fried cauliflower with a sweet and spicy dressing (£16)

Kimchi cheese fries (£8) - also a must-order

Room for dessert?

Yes, you'll need to save room, because this was a definite highlight of our meal here. Options include apple pie with soju caramel or a soft serve of the day, but you'll go home crying if you don't have the following.

The croffle ice cream sandwich served with cinnamon hotteok sauce (£9). As the name suggests this is the love child of a croissant and waffle pairing and it's very, very good.