니이스 컵 닭 (Nice Cup Chicken): No ddukbokgi and bland odeng combo of the traditional takeaway stand, here. Instead, the proprietors of Nice Cup Chicken serve up the perfect golden ratio of fried chicken to ddukbokgi to tater tots in a small paper cup, all mixed up with a sweet, extra spicy red sauce guaranteed to cause labored breathing and runny noses. Oh, how your snout runneth over.
For the uninitiated, ddubokgi refers to a dish made of those white dduk tubes, center front. People call them rice cakes, but they’re really more like thick, solid, glutinous pasta noodles. At Nice Cup, the dduk itself is cooked, then fried, for a crispy skin and chewy interior. The chicken pieces are lovely strips of boneless white meat prepared with that secret Korean frying technique. The tater tots kick ass simply for being tater tots. Each component in the cup could do just fine on its own, but the sum of all parts elevates three classic Korean and American junk food staples into a street dish nonpareil. Located on the main drag in the Myeongdong shopping district AND IN MY BELLEH.
