This alley off Collins Street is killing it lately. The folks behind ragingly popular café Purple Peanuts have just opened Pallet out the back serving ace coffee, Italian salads and Japanese teriyaki beef burgers, and a few doors down is Chick-In – a copper and wood Korean joint flogging fried chicken, jugs of Brunswick Bitter and Kenny G’s greatest hits.
They do that poultry every which way here. You can take yours as lightly battered wings slicked in a sweet soy glaze, and we’re pretty keen to come back for the Korean schnitzel. For us though, it’s all about the gang jung. Here you get a pile of spicy potato wedges, juicy nuggets of Korean fried chicken breast and thigh and fat chewy rice noodles all captured in a sticky sweet chilli sauce. It’s like the genius invention of a stoned teenager, bar the large heap of mirin-dressed coleslaw, piquant pickled daikon cubes and salted cucumber rounds to defibrillate your tastebuds.
It ain't health food, but you could make this place your regular without upgrading your health insurance (unlike Gami Chicken and Beer on Lonsdale Street, which deals exclusively in mountains of fried poultry and kegs – for which we love them).
You can get bitter-sweet peach iced tea, grilled chicken or tofu on mixed lettuce salads and they even do a vegan version of bibimbap (Korea’s phonetically pleasing dish of steamed rice topped with neat piles of pickled vegetables, meat, and egg for mixing together) which sees your rice crowned with a neatly fanned avocado, pickled ginger and a galactic streak of black and white sesame seeds and crushed nori.
The service is fast and furious enough to get you in and out in your lunch break, and friendly enough to make it worth a post-work visit with pals. They also do take away if you want to be king of the office.
