Chicken Institute, Surry Hills
EDIT: CLOSED
So if you follow me on Instagram you’ll know that I tend to eat fried chicken at least once a week because well, fried chicken is awesome. For Raff’s belated birthday dinner we went to the newly opened Chicken Institute (61 Fitzroy St, Surry Hills), headed up by Heaven Kim, the executive chef from Paramount Coffee Project.
The Chicken Institute is still waiting for their liquor license to kick in so in the meantime you’re able to BYO but we opted to try their Magic Shakes ($8)- Salted Caramel and Peanut Butter. We liked the peanut butter shake but oh how I wished the salted caramel shake had about 100 times more salted caramel because if I’m gonna suffer from my lactose intolerance later then I want a milkshake that punches me in the face with flavour.
There are 4 types of the ‘Damn good fried chicken’- original, sticky, peri peri or garlic, with each chook accompanied by a little saucer of fluro yellow pickled radish. We just had to get the Original ($20) with house made spicy chicken salt and lime as a baseline for comparison of all the fried chickens in the land. While the batter isn’t as thick and crispy as other Korean fried chickens I’ve had, the boneless thigh fillets are incredibly juicy and super tender. My soul was saddened when we realised that the bucket wasn’t entirely full of chicken and only held 5 pieces. As tasty as the chicken was I’m just not sure how I feel about paying $4 per piece of chicken and because the chicken was boneless each piece just felt substantially smaller to hold than at my usual fried chicken joints.
I loved the Garlic Chicken ($24) which had a fragrant garlic caramel glaze, crushed peanuts and lime but man pushing at almost $5 per piece just made me sad and wish for unlimited pieces to satisfy my fried chicken heart.
From the Ssam BBQ Grill there’s the option of Pork Belly ($16), Wagyu ($24) or for the indecisive- the Half half ($21) with 4 slices of each meat plus lettuce, miso paste, pickled garlic and radish kimchi to bundle it all together for a parcel of tastiness. The Wagyu was my fave, fatty and smoky and just perfect.
Moving onto desserts, we order the Sweet Potato Doughnuts ($8) with dulce de leche. The outer crust to the doughnuts are thin and crisp but the innards are a little on the dense side and doesn’t really need the dulce de leche sauce as the doughnuts themselves are sweet enough even for this sweet tooth.
I’ve always loved the gold fish ice creams you can get at the asian grocery so we had to order the Gold Fish Ice Cream Waffle ($6). The presentation is cute, but the waffle is not exactly easy to eat. I would have loved to pick the whole thing up and bite into it but the outer layer was covered in a sweet gooey icing and a sprinkle of nuts and as we did not receive any cutlery we resorted to stabbing at it with chopsticks.
Requisite innards shot of red bean layer!
All in all I liked the food at Chicken Institute but it is on the pricey side. The staff are lovely but they’re still getting their bearings so I’d recommend giving them a couple more weeks and getting there as soon as they open otherwise the kitchen gets smashed and you might wait for ages for your food and drinks to arrive.
Chicken Institute
61 Fitzroy St,
Surry Hills
NSW
Trading Hours:
Tue – Sun: 5pm – 10pm
