Vincci Tsui
Grilled pork belly from Ogam Chicken
Opening just over a month ago Ogam Chicken is the latest addition in a handful of restaurants specializing in Korean fried chicken or KFC that have recently sprung up in the Calgary area. Korean fried chicken differs from the Colonel’s recipe in that the batter is generally lighter and less greasy and instead of hot wings or buffalo wings the flavours are more Asian-inspired. At Ogam Chicken for example you have a choice of crispy (plain) seasoned or soy garlic along with other Korean dishes.
Nine of us descended upon the 50-seat restaurant a couple weeks ago curious about this hole-in-the-wall located on Macleod Trail just across from the north side of Chinook Centre. We ordered a “Half & Half” crispy and soy garlic bird ($23) a small order (five pieces) of seasoned drumsticks and breasts ($13) and a small order of crispy Ogam bites ($11) the restaurant’s answer to popcorn chicken.
Our first reaction to the chicken is that the pieces are huge — I snagged a drumstick and it looked more like one of those smoked turkey legs you get on the Stampede midway. The batter on the chicken is thick but crisp and airy while the meat itself is juicy and steaming hot.
The plain crispy chicken could use a touch more seasoning while the sticky sweet “chilli” sauce that covers the seasoned chicken could use a bit more of a kick. Despite the sauciness however the batter still manages to stay crunchy. The runaway favourite was the soy garlic chicken — applied with a very light hand it adds just the right amount of savoury goodness to the fried chicken. All fried chicken orders come with a bowl of pickled radish; sweet and tangy it is a fresh bite to cleanse and reset the palate.
Ogam Chicken also offers three-piece combos that come with salad Ogam sauce and your choice of fried rice potato wedges or onion rings but really you should skip the combos in favour of the Korean BBQ dishes on the back of the menu. There are familiar favourites like bulgogi ($15) and short ribs ($19) but also traditional dishes that are not seen as often here in Calgary like tteok-bokki (rice cakes $11) Andong-style soy-steamed chicken ($41) or kimchi ham stew ($39).
We splurged on the soy-steamed chicken which takes 40 minutes to prepare but we were too busy eating everything else and being distracted by the K-pop music videos blaring from the flat-screen TVs to notice. The waitress set down a steaming hot trough filled with chicken glass noodles potatoes shiitake mushrooms carrots and other veggies in a soy-based broth. Again the chicken was a little overdone but it was fun slurping up the noodles and eating all the veggies that had soaked up the broth.
The one dish that has been getting a bit of buzz on Instagram is the grilled pork belly ($15). The pork belly slices weren’t greasy and heavy at all but instead moist and tender served in a flavourful sweet-savoury sauce. The bulgogi and short ribs on the other hand were a bit on the tougher side. What really impressed me though was the array of banchan or side dishes that were served with the meat. There was the usual cabbage kimchi but there was also a set-your-tongue-on-fire radish kimchi perilla (Korean shiso) kimchi pickled garlic potato salad and — my new favourite — a chewy squid kimchi. Lettuce fermented bean paste — to wrap your meat ssam -style — and rice were also provided.
Ogam Chicken is very much a mom-and-pop affair so service was a little on the slow side but pleasant. Though fried chicken is certainly not an everyday (or even every month) food for me I will definitely be back to try some more of their unique Korean dishes.
