It’s chicken and beer served with ‘Seoul’
A NEW restaurant which opened in a major Cairns shopping centre is offering another type of “KFC” – Korean Fried Chicken, that is.
Chi’Mac 12 is the brainchild of Korean ex-pats Michael Kim, Yoon Kang and Jason Kim.
The eatery, which opened earlier this week at Stockland Cairns at Earlville, serves up gourmet chicken, created with a special blend of 12 spices.
The boutique restaurant is in the process of obtaining a liquor licence to serve craft beers to enhance the oriental flavours of the chicken, such as sweet and spicy, “cheesy snowy” and garlic/soy.
Much like the Colonel Sanders’ famously secretive 11 herbs and spices, Chi’Mac (Korean for “chicken and beer”), Michael Kim said the ingredients of their original “crunch” recipe chicken was hard to come by.
“We have to import some of the ingredients, such as an exotic flour,” he said.
He said fried chicken was very popular in South Korea, where there were about 36,000 stores dedicated to the dish and now the Korean cuisine was conquering the world.
“K-Pop has become very popular around the world, particularly in Asian countries like China and Vietnam,” he said.
“They’ve also started watching Korean TV shows.
“A lot of these shows and movies have scenes where they have beer and Korean chicken together and that impacted other countries as well.”
The restaurant is located near the food court, as part of Stockland’s new Leisure and Dining Precinct, soon to include the Lantern Lane.