NaruOne, Town Hall

It’s hard to resist finger licking good chicken, so when the name NaruOne started popping up on food blogs and was being touted as “the best Korean Fried Chicken in Sydney”, I knew that it was only a matter of time before I found myself there to try it out. I had walked past NaruOne many times as it is smack bang in the middle of the Koreatown strip on Pitt Street, only I never noticed it because it is on the basement level, so you have to go down a small flight of stairs to get in.

It is a decent sized restaurant with simple and clean wooden furnishings and even at 8pm on a weeknight it was a full house. It’s clear that fried chicken is their specialty, as they have a large wall mounted sign displaying the different varieties and combos of “Naru Chickens” available to order. We were starving, so we quickly settled on a plate of Half & Half Boneless Fried Chicken Gangjung with Sweet & Spicy sauce and Original style, and potato noodles to share. In our hunger mode, we were rather disappointed to see other tables being served with the traditional Korean side dishes of kimchi etc. upon sitting down, whereas we waited for quite awhile before flagging down a waitress and asking for our side dishes too…only to be told something about how our dishes didn’t come with side dishes? Not sure what the policy at NaruOne is, but after a confused exchange with the waitress we ended up with a few side dishes to nibble on before our mains came out.

The stir fried potato noodles (jap chae) with beef came out first and were fairly unremarkable – the usual chewy noodles flavoured with a liberal amount of sweet soy sauce and plenty of sliced onions, shallots and enoki mushrooms heaped on top.

Potato Noodles with beef, $12

The star of the meal was obviously the Korean Fried Chicken and having had it in Korea before and also at a Korean restaurant in NYC as well, I had high expectations for NaruOne’s rendition. It didn’t let me down – with the glorious Original style chicken featuring a lightly battered exterior, encasing juicy meat inside. The copious amounts of red Sweet and Spicy sauce coating the other half of the fried chicken platter provided a strong punch of sticky Korean chilli flavour to keep things interesting. It was a good idea to get the Half and Half because the Sweet and Spicy sauce was actually quite chilli and your tastebuds will relish the break from the spiciness if you are alternate eating with the Original style chicken. I also loved the fact that the chicken was all boneless which means no need to eat with your hands!

Half and Half Boneless Fried Chicken (Original/Sweet and Spicy) $33

NaruOne definitely gives KFC a run for its money and while the platter is actually quite pricey, it is a generous serving and was way too big for 2 girls to share so we ended up taking some home for our next meal. It’s a great dish to share with a group of friends so if you’re ever craving some piping hot fried chicken, this is the place to hit up.

NaruOne
375 Pitt Street, Sydney NSW 2000
Phone: (02) 9261 2680


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NaruOne Korean Restaurant on Urbanspoon

11 Comments

  • bob says:

    might be dropping in for lunch tomorrow 🙂

  • milkteaxx says:

    i think the other stuff is pretty mediocore but the chicken is definitely good! keep an eye out for our next sydney korean fried chicken association outing ( find us on FB!)

  • That’s right… I think you only get the banchan when you order something from the equivalent of ‘mains’. Can’t remember exactly…

  • Yeah you do need to order a main dish, and not just chicken to get the banchan. Good chicken though hey? 🙂

  • Love the fried chicken from NaruOne! The spring onion one is super awesome 😀

  • ahc11 says:

    With Korean food you only are meant to eat banchan (side dishes) with dishes that come with rice. Banchan isn’t (as a lot of people think) appetisers or snacks, but are meant to accompany rice. The (esp seoul region) korean palate is used to much less salt than western standards so banchan is purposely stronger/saltier in taste to be balanced out with rice. A lot of Koreans are surprised at how non koreans just eat banchan by itself. Eg, you have main of a stew with rice, banchan would come out. So when you order food that’s a main in itself like fried chicken, noodle soup or ddokbokki, banchan is usually never served with it, rather one or two simple accompaniments like picked radish come out.

    Tl;dr You unfairly got side dishes.

    • Ah that makes more sense – thanks for clarifying that! We haven’t noticed whether the side dishes have come out only with rice at other Korean restaurants…probably because we usually do Korean with large groups and someone always orders a rice dish anyway so we end up with the side dishes one way or another.

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