This restaurant is now closed.

Angry Chicken is in a laneway next to the George Street Cinemas.   Years ago, this laneways attracted nothing but half empty beer bottles and the uneasy fragrance of eau-de-urine.  For a while the City of Sydney placed lightboxes housing various pieces of Sydney artifacts in an attempt to rejuvenate this laneway.  That lasted a few months.  But still the offending fragrance lingered.

Today, there’s no longer any evidence of the lightboxes, the walls are now painted midnight black and the air is almost pristine.  Noodlies, Sydney food blog reckons having the shops in them occupied probably did the trick. One of the shops in this laneway is Angry Chicken and they serve up, well… fried chicken.  I’m guessing this fine cuisine is probably the result of US bases in Korea, maybe it was the Colonel himself!

We’ve tried TwoTwo in Strathfield a while back and today, it’s Angry Chicken.

korean angry birds entrance

Angry Chicken sounds aggressive, though it looks anything but.  On the glass doors are cute cartoon decals, including multiple angry birds lit up with strands of white lantern lights.  There’s a stunning feature wall of a maiden in willow pattern style.  It’s seen better times, these days one of the features of the feature wall is that bits of it are flaking off, little by little.

angry chicken wall

There’s a red and yellow feature wall along the back wall, though the yellow one looks like it’s half finished, see above and judge for yourself.

One part of me thinks this is their way of demonstrating a devil-may-care hipness.  But a more sensible part of me thinks this place is probably not doing as well as they’d hoped.  The latter assessment is supported by the fact that we were the only customers at 6.30pm on a Thursday night.

kim chi jeon korean angry birds

When the kim chi jeon comes out, I’m still in two minds.  That aluminum baking tray…. is that being ironic or they can’t afford better plates?  We’re not offered any complimentary kim chi, just a plate of salad greens – ironic or cost cutting? Can someone explain?

The pancake is surprisingly good, strong, salty flavours with a good variety of ingredients including kim chi and seafood.  In fact, it’s delicious.

korean honey fried chicken

But we’re here for chicken, angry chicken.  The honey fried chicken is a generous serving with various cuts including wings and drum sticks.  Glistening, golden fried though it could have been a little sweeter, it’s honey chicken after all.  The flesh is pristine white and tender.

korean chilli fried chicken

Angry chicken’s chilli chook looks fiery but sadly, that’s just a tease.  Sure it looks tasty with that crimson crunchy skin and well cooked flesh but it’s not much on the spicy front, maybe this is a new age chook because it just wasn’t angry.

Here lies the paradox with this place. I should hate it; it’s false advertising –  I’ve paid money but don’t get enough honey, the angry chicken is just sultry, and that half done decor and the aluminium tray for plates… what gives?!  oh, and when I make the usual signature hand gesture to indicate I want the bill, the waitress turns down the music (and Troublemaker was playing, one of my fav k-pop songs too).

Still, there is a happy ending, we walked out with smiles on our faces, revelling in the awkward ambiguity of this place, smelling of meat and garlic though mercifully, sans eau-de-urine.

Angry Chicken
Laneway next to George Street Cinemas
Between George and Kent streets, Sydney CBD.