Boke Bird Night

Thursday Thursday Thursday!  One night only.
Get your fried chicken here!

For months I’ve been trying to make it to Boke Bowl over in the central eastside area for their Thursday night dinner.  The restaurant is primarily a lunch spot, serving ramen and steamed buns, but on Thursdays they stay open late for a Korean Fried Chicken dinner called “Boke Bird”.

While their entire menu is still available, the chicken is the star.  The chickens are lightly smoked, brined for 48 hours, then deep fried whole.  This is not southern fried chicken.  It is not breaded. I’d say a closer comparison is to the deep fried turkey many families prepare at Thanksgiving.  This bird is moist (sorry, I know a lot of people hate that word, but it’s true) and the skin incredibly crispy. So crispy that a couple of us accidentally ate a little bit of bone thinking it was a hard chunk of skin.  Oops.  The whole thing is topped with little fried onion rings and a vinegar sauce that everyone was spooning onto leftover rice at the end of the meal.  It really was some of the best chicken I’ve had in a long time and ordering an entire bird is a lot of fun.

Before the chicken arrived they served us two bowls of green onion and ginger rice along with kimchi and a plate of pickles. Carrots, okra, cucumbers, cauliflower and a white crunchy veggie that I think was daikon.  All I can say about the kimchi is that it was spicy.   I’m not generally a fan (and neither were any of my dining companions) so I can’t really rate it.   Along with the pickles, rice and chicken you get a couple steamer baskets of buns.  Not bao, but flat things we all used to make little chicken, rice and pickle bundles. If I go back again, I wold get an extra order of these.

So, what does all this cost? $50 for the entire meal!  They say the whole bird feeds 4-5, but 4 of us easily demolished it, so a party of five might need to order some additional sides.  But when you break it down, for four people it’s $12.50 per person.  Of course that’s before drinks, but still a pretty good deal.   You can also order a half bird for $30.

I regret now not ordering dessert.  They make their own Twinkies and a lemongrass ginger soft serve ice cream that sound really good.  But were were all full and very satisfied.

The whole experience was just fun.  The modern decor was cool, the seating is family style but no one had any annoying neighbors and the service was fast and helpful.

Everything was great.  The chicken was excellent.