Crispy Crunchy and Convenient. 11.2.25

     KOGI to go

66 Queens Road, Brighton BN1 3XD.

Prices: Most expensive dishes are around £14.

I love food but I’m not a foodie. Let me explain. Good food is something I appreciate, and I can usually distinguish between the various grades of food I consume. It’s rare in London to end up with really terrible food because the competition is so fierce. And my palate is sufficiently refined to distinguish between mediocre, good, well good, and astonishingly good food. But you would need a chef’s palate and nostrils to offer a really nuanced take on any individual food item. That’s not me. I also admit that I don’t care enough about the best of the best to queue for hours to sample, say, the best corndog in London or whatever the latest hot dish happens to be. For me, eating well is a complement and an adjunct to spending time bonding with the people I love.

Netflix has a series called ‘Culinary Class War’ which is set in South Korea and is a competition to find the best chef in Korea. Having watched more of the first season, one of the things I noticed that the judges give bonus points for is if the dish is authentic. Obviously, it needs to be delicious too but what really resonated with me as a viewer was when the judges waxed poetic about how this dish or that transported them to a different time and place. Ratatouille, anyone?

Which brings me to KOGI to go, a Korean fried chicken joint. I was in Brighton to visit a friend, and I fancied fried chicken. The choice of dining establishment was mine and I picked the nearest reasonable looking place I could find. At about 100 yards from the main Brighton train station, Kogi it was. It’s a barebones establishment with a few tables and chairs and it looks like the kind of place where you pick up your order of chicken on the way home from the train station and to munch in front of the telly whilst swilling beer. The premises was clean and brightly lit with nothing to concern a random passing health inspector. A smiling petite East Asian woman took our order. A bright white board advertised their wares which were limited to fried chicken and corndogs. Prices were reasonable for what was being sold with 4 pieces of boneless chicken thighs being priced at just over £7 and 7 pieces for under £14. We opted to share 7 boneless thighs and at our request, the sweet soy sauce was served separately in a bowl. The premises was unlicensed, so we settled for soft drinks. There was not too long to wait before the food showed up. The boneless chicken thighs were chunky with a crispy golden-brown coating that had a texture resembling Brighton beach in all its pebbled glory. The meat was juicy and piping hot. The sweet soy sauce came in a bowl, looked handmade, and tasted as advertised. Dunking the chicken in the sauce before biting it elevated the flavour. I do think a little bite to the flavour would have made it better but that’s on me for not ordering the chilli sauce.

This is the thing. I would say that for food to be considered astonishingly good, it has to compel your attention in a way a beautiful woman or an act of sporting brilliance does – you don’t want to stare slack-jawed, but you just can’t help yourself. Either that, or it combines quality of the cooking with an emotional resonance that the ordinary meal can’t offer. For the KOGI boneless chicken to qualify as astonishingly good, it would have to be both authentically Korean and be life-changingly delicious. Not having been to Korea, I couldn’t vouch for how genuinely Korean the Kogi take was, that was on me. However, I can say that whilst the chicken was good, it could not be described as epic. This is not to knock the meal. For roughly £20, it happily met our expectations. We later repaired to a nearby Wetherspoons for cheap booze and to continue the chat. That was not epic either but it’s a ‘spoons … you know what I mean, right?

To sum up, the price was fair, the premises clean, service polite, and the chicken was crunchy and juicy in the right places. Not worth making a special trip from London for but a definite local hero.