Meet Chi Chi’s, New Orleans’s Cool New Hangout for Korean Fried Chicken and Onigirazu | Eater New Orleans
"On Freret Street I found an impossibly cool, compact shop opened in September by Adolfo “Fito” Garcia III (after cooking in Panama City, Paris, and New York) and his fiancée Sophia Petrou that purposefully mashes Korean fried chicken with Japanese onigirazu and kakigōri. The concept centers on four main categories—Korean chicken wings, fried chicken sandwiches, onigirazu (sushi sandwiches), and kakigōri (Japanese shaved ice)—served alongside three-liter towers of beer and soju in a bustling space with a playful cartoon aesthetic and a Koreatown after-hours vibe (squeezed tables, tall windows, lit up at night). Garcia marinates the chicken 24 hours in Korean rice wine, peanut oil, soy sauce and a spice blend, uses an initial rice- and all-purpose-flour dredge, velvets in an ice-cold batter, then double-fries; wings are finished with soy-garlic or gochujang (or a mix) and come with tangy pickled daikon (6/$12, 12/$20, 20/$32). There are two sandwiches — a classic Southern fried chicken with buttermilk ranch, pickles and shredded lettuce, and a KFC with gochujang, sesame cabbage slaw and pickles (both $12) — plus onigirazu options (seasonal veggie $10; spicy tuna cucumber $12; salmon jalapeño $14; Korean fried chicken $14). For dessert he obsessively makes kakigōri from filtered ice blocks and house-made syrups (matcha and strawberry cream, $7, are permanent; seasonal flavors rotate), and the place feels rooted in both their New Orleans restaurant-family backgrounds and the communal, good-time spirit Garcia cites between a crawfish boil and chimaek dining." - Clair Lorell
