You Owe Yourself a Trip to Cafe Soho

Brian Freedman heads to Cheltenham Avenue to try the much ballyhooed Korean fried chicken at Cafe Soho. He finds that the chicken isn’t the only thing worth crowing about though that certainly lives up to the hype.

Soy-garlic chicken finds a balance between sweet and tart that hasn’t been seen since Cyndi Lauper’s heyday. Each bite leaves your lips barely sticky, a fine glaze of salty, sweet-nutty film on your teeth. You’ll want to rinse this down with a bottle of OB (Oriental Brewery), a lager brewed in South Korea, to clear the path for your next hit. The OB is a good match here for the same reason Bud can be a good match for fried chicken—it’s crisp, refreshing and lets the food play the starring role. It ain’t great beer, but it’s great with fried food.

The spicy chicken is menacingly red, and not for amateurs. Still, for all the heat it generates, the flavor of delicate chicken is front and center. Most dishes come in orders of 20, though you have the option of doing a 10-10 split with the flavored versions.

The Real KFC (Korean Fried Chicken) [Philadelphia Weekly]