Choong Man Chicken

Choong Man is a fried chicken chain from Korea with a handful of DC outposts and that recently opened in Glenview next door to Pita Inn. Short version - chicken was cooked perfectly, but too bready; the sauces ranged from good to phenomenal; and my meal was incomplete because I didn't try the fried and smoked chicken.

The chicken gets the classic Korean double fry. The meat arrived hot and juicy. As is typical for the style, whole chickens are hacked up into small pieces. Smaller orders of tenders only and wings only are also available. We tried a whole chicken and wings and in both cases, the breading was too thick for pieces that small.

The Glenview location doesn't appear to have a website, but some of the DC-area ones share one and the menu is, to my memory, the same. There are three categories of chicken - traditional with various sauces to choose from; snow chicken; and tikkudak, which is fried and smoked chicken.


We started with the regular fried chicken with the garlic soy sauce on the side. Without the sauce, it was underseasoned. With the garlic soy sauce, which ran a touch sweet, it was really good. I'd happily eat it again and again if I lived in Glenview and Bonchon (5 minutes north on Milwaukee) was closed.


Up next was the hot snow onion chicken wings. There are three snow onion chicken options, each of which has a sweet, slightly acidic mayo-based sauce along with a mess of mild raw onion. The hot version comes with a fantastic spicy sauce. I couldn't begin to guess what goes into the chutney-like sauce but if they sold bottles of it, I'd have bought one. A nice thing about the chicken being doused in sauce is that the thick breading was much less of an issue on these wings.

The third category of chicken on the menu is tikkudak, which is fried and smoked. Hearing about that is what put the restaurant on my radar but I completely forgot about in the week that followed. Getting old. I'm still curious to try it but after reading this article from the Washington Post, I'm not in any hurry to run back to check it out.

For people who find themselves in Glenview and like fried chicken, it's worth giving Choong Man a shot, especially for the snow chicken. But based on my visit, I wouldn't recommend anyone go out of the way.

Choong Man Chicken
9850 Milwaukee Ave
Glenview, IL
(224) 361-3334
www.cmchicken.us (currently only for DC area locations)