Coqodaq

Coqodaq is the second restaurant from owners of Cote Korean steakhouse. This restaurant like Cote is difficult and annoying to snag reservations for a reasonable time. I checked out their Thanksgiving menu, and it seemed close enough to their regular menu. I ended up making a reservation for 1:30 PM on a Thursday fairly easily a few days prior.

This restaurant also was featured in an episode of “Knife Edge: Chasing Michelin Stars”, and it was interesting to learn about the attention they provided to something as straight forward as Korean fried chicken.

Ambiance & Service

As expected, the ambiance is loud, slightly bougie, and club-like. The music is playing a lot of popular bumping songs, and it helps make the atmosphere very thematic and celebratory.

Right when you enter into the restaurant, there are 3 sinks with different soaps that you can wash your hands with. It’s right out in the open. Supposedly the soaps are pretty expensive, but I thought this was an interesting experience.

The service is also just as good too. They know how to pace all the courses, and the food comes out pretty timely. Servers quickly come over to fill your glasses with water, and they are very attentive to all the tables equally.

Food

We ordered the “Thanksgiving Bucket List”, which was $85 per person.

Within a few minutes, they brought out a Pasture-Raised Chicken Consomme, which was made with Korean red ginseng and chives. My partner raved at how great this was, and I thought it was pretty good too. They added a fair amount of salt and other ingredients to really help make the chicken flavors pronounced. For something as simple as this, it’s also quite welcomed.

The Egg ($23 - left) came with vodka, elderflower, MUYU Jasmine, and lychee. This was surprisingly balanced and very tasty. I actually liked the elderflower flavors mixed with the lychee ice.

The Grey Room ($13 - right) came with Vita coco coconut water, Aplos Arise (non-alcoholic spirit infused with adaptogens), Adaptogens (herbs and roots), and Verjus (unfermented juice of unripe grapes). This was also very good. It has this earthy and subtly sweet flavor that was quite pleasant.

They brought out Turkey Nuggets with cranberry sauce. I imagine this is very similar to if you order a chicken nugget off the normal menu and top it with a dollop of caviar. The turkey nugget was surprisingly very delicious. The crust of this reminded me of a much tastier and properly made Chicken McNugget crust. I know it’s weird comparing this to fast food, but it reminded me of about 2 decades ago how the crust for the chicken nuggets were revered. The cranberry sauce on top was sweet faking a sensation of ketchup, and everything was very good in a single bite.

After the turkey nuggets, they gave us the main courses all at once.

The Scallion Salad was surprisingly liked by my partner who often complains about scallions tasting “soapy”. This scallion salad tasted fresh and crispy, straight out of the garden with very clean aromas.

The Banchan included left to right:

• Kimchi - this was basically cabbage soaked in kimchi type seasoning
• Radish - this should be very familiar to anyone that has Korean fried chicken. They always give this to reset your palette when desired.
• Pickled Lotus Root - this was surprisingly very good because they also put in some yuzu seasoning in the pickling of it.

The Japchae came with Korean glass noodles with mountain vegetables. This tasted like other Korean japchae out there with one very notable thing. The noodles were quite clean and easy to grip unlike others. Maybe they properly dried this or they prepared this in a different way, but I noticed the texture being slightly different.

The Sticky Rice Stuff came with Chinese sausage and shiitake mushrooms. Surprisingly the rice and Chinese sausage brought back some memories. The mushrooms I didn’t care about, so my partner vacuumed all that up. The Chinese sausage is similar to the Taiwanese sausage that you might find in fried rice.

The Turkey Coqodaq Gravy was surprisingly very tasty, but it seemed like an outlier. I didn’t know what to pour this onto. I also noticed there were some black truffles in it, which gave it an interesting earthy flavor in addition to it being salted and savory.

The sauces from left to right:

• Cilantro - this tasted similarly to a cilantro aioli. The cilantro was very prominent.
• Pepper Parmesan - this reminded me a bit of a cacio pepe sauce. My partner enjoyed this the most.
• Honey Mustard - this was also very enjoyable by my partner because it reminded them of their childhood surprisingly. I also learned they liked this particular type of honey mustard. To me, it tasted more natural, meaning you can taste the mustard and honey distinctly, and it felt fresh.
• Gochujang BBQ sauce - this tasted like a sweetened BBQ sauce with a slight kick to it.

I actually didn’t care to use much of the sauces because the seasoning on the chicken was already very good.

This is the Fried Chicken Coqodaq Original. I enjoyed this a lot because the texture of the batter was similar to the turkey nugget, and it was quite tasty. Is it the best we’ve ever had? Really difficult to say that, but it definitely was very delicious. It tasted like classic Korean fried chicken that had some care on how it was fried and also getting the oil to not stick.

This was the Roasted Kabocha Squash Brulee with toasted marshmallow. This was actually really good. It’s basically mashed squash with some marshmallow on top. It wasn’t super sweet, and it was seasoned just right.

Here are the sauced chickens with Soy Garlic Glaze and Gochujang Glaze. The soy garlic glaze was OK. It was slightly sticky, and the coating of it added another layer of crunch. The gochujang glaze was also ok. I was expecting it to be spicy, but it was very tame and sweet. In all, I actually did not care much about either of these.

If I ordered again, I’d probably stick to the original because I like the regular seasoning.

Lastly, they gave us a small Pumpkin Caramel Soft Serve with brown sugar crumble. The caramel tasted a bit artificial, and I didn’t quite get much pumpkin flavors. Otherwise, it tasted pretty good as do most soft serves.

Overall Impression

Coqodaq was surprisingly a very good fried chicken restaurant. I know it was in pursuit of a Michelin Star, but I’d say that’s very difficult to keep quality consistent especially at the volume that they serve this food in. In lieu of the star, it was award the Michelin Bib, which I feel they are well deserved of. As long as you don’t get suckered into chicken nuggets with caviar, I think the value for the food here was good. Sure you can pay less for fried chicken, but I really like the aspect of a tasting menu without insane prices and good drinks.

Yelp & Google Jabs

As an American cuisine restaurant I’d say its gorgeous, great staff and tasty food. If you go in with the idea you’re eating american cuisine its good - if you’re hoping for Korean cuisine or some semblance of it, you’ll be disappointed. The fried chicken pieces are tiny - tiny drumstick for $6.50 - not even a normal size one. They’ve strayed so far from Korean style food they should probably stop claiming it.

This Yelper has not had Korean fried chicken before. Koreans love fried chicken, and this is the epitome of it. If you go to chains like Bonchon, you’ll see the prices are not cheap either compared to “American” fried chicken.

As a fried chicken and caviar lover, I could not wait to try it.

Caviar by itself is already pretty good. Caviar on top of fried chicken nuggets seems unnecessary.

I went with a group of Asian people, all very experienced with Korean food and Asian food in general. I should’ve known the moment I walked in and we were the only table of Asian people that the night was going to be enraging…it is trying so hard to be fancy but it just comes off so tacky

The amusing part about this Elitist’s review is that Coqodaq was quite honest about who its target audience was from the very beginning. In multiple reviews and interviews with the owners and chefs, they communicated it was about the show. If you think about it… caviar and chicken nuggets… if anyone realistically expects this to not be for show, then they they need to realize gullible isn’t in the dictionary. The fact that this Elitist was surprised about this conveys they didn’t do their homework before coming here.

Revisions

1. Nov 27, 2025 - Initial revision.