Over the past few years, Kong’s Chicken Shop has had several pop-up restaurants across the city centre but now it has found a permanent home on Oldham Street in Manchester’s historic Northern Quarter.
With a fixed location comes an expanded menu, which boasts interesting dishes such as warm sourdough with cowboy butter, beef tartare on ‘crispy gyoza skins’ and pan-fried seabass with an Asian-style fresh salad.
But you’re not here to hear about the fancier side of the menu (though based on the dishes that came past our table, they all looked delicious and I’m sure they tasted good as well), you want to know about the chicken sandwiches. So let’s get into it.
Food: Kong’s Signature Chicken Sandwich w/ fries
Location/Restaurant: Kong’s Chicken Shop, Oldham Street, Manchester
Price: £13.50
Fried chicken sandwiches have been one of my great culinary loves ever since I was old enough to walk into KFC and order a Zinger burger, but in recent years they have been something I have often avoided at restaurants, as my last few have been disappointing.
Firstly, getting fried chicken right is much harder to do than people realise; striking the balance of a having perfectly crispy (and flavoursome) coating while keeping the chicken inside juicy.
Then you have the accompaniments - the sauces, the leafage, pickles or no pickles? Some restaurants spend so much time getting the chicken right they don’t fine-tune the rest of the sandwich.
And finally of course this all has to be sandwiched within a quality piece of bread. This is a plea to makers of all sandwiches, not just of the chicken variety, do not skimp on your bread and make sure it’s fresh; it makes a hell of a difference.
So with all this in mind, you’ll be glad to know that Kong delivers on all three of the major points.
I had Kong’s Signature Chicken Sandwich - a fried chicken thigh with sriracha coleslaw, burger sauce, iceberg lettuce and gherkin slices. It also has the ingenious addition of a piece of chicken skin crisped up into crackling; adding texture and also an added punch of chicken flavour. All these ingredients are neatly cushioned between a freshly toasted and seeded brioche bun.
For me, the secret to every sandwich is to make every single bite satisfying; every flavour and ingredient should come through every time you put it into your mouth. For the Signature Chicken sandwich, this was achieved by layering the crunch of the chicken and the crackling with the tang of the gherkins alongside the spice of the sriracha slaw.
I have only two complaints. I would have liked more burger sauce as the edges, and therefore the crunchiest parts, of the chicken thigh were a little dry. Secondly, and this is more my fault than the restaurant’s, I should have upgraded to the Korean/Buffalo fries (for an extra £2).
My girlfriend had the former and they were tangy, spicy and bursting with flavour. The normal fries were still good, having a good crunch to them while remaining fluffy inside, but after I had tasted the Korean variant I had serious FOMO.
This was all complimented well with a pint of the house lager which was crisp and refreshing and followed up with lovely Sticky Toffee Pudding which is pictured below.
Overall, Kong’s Chicken Shop is a welcome addition to the Northern Quarter’s food scene and I will be returning in the future. Maybe next time I’ll try their Korean or Tandoori Fried Chicken burger, or maybe I’ll move away from their poultry offerings and instead go for one of their Steak Sandwiches.
These food reviews won’t have a rating system but I will say that I would recommend Kong’s to a close friend - one who would likely see me quite soon after having the meal, so if they didn’t enjoy it they would remember to tell me about it.
Anyway, see you all next time and happy eating!