Chick Chick – the Upper West Side's twice-fried institution

On the corner of Amsterdam Avenue and 90th Street, Chick Chick has turned a single craving into one of the Upper West Side's most dependable addresses. Chef Jun Park opened the restaurant in May 2021, building it around the two dishes he loves most: fried chicken and ramen. The room is narrow, with counter seats alongside tables, and the kitchen works through three styles of twice-fried bird finished in Korean-leaning glazes and sauces. The restaurant was awarded the MICHELIN Bib Gourmand in 2022, the guide's distinction for honest, well-priced cooking, and held it through 2024 before being carried into the 2025 MICHELIN Guide selection. For Upper West Siders it has become the answer to a quick, well-made dinner rather than a trend to chase — proof that a corner chicken shop can hold a serious culinary pedigree without raising its voice.

01The room and the setting

Chick Chick sits on a corner of Amsterdam Avenue, a narrow, busy room built for turnover rather than lingering, with counter seats set alongside regular tables. It opened as a table-service restaurant, and the people behind it had already proven they could run a tight room: they are also the owners of Jun-Men Ramen Bar in Chelsea, Park's first restaurant.

02The chef

Jun Park grew up in South Korea with what he has called a lifelong fixation on one ingredient: "Ever since I was growing up in South Korea, I have been absolutely obsessed with chicken." He had already made his name with Jun-Men Ramen Bar before deciding to build a restaurant entirely around that obsession, breaking ground on the Upper West Side just as the pandemic hit, when financing fell through and the project nearly stalled. He pushed ahead anyway. Park's chicken is brined in a mix of twenty herbs and seasonings before it goes into the fryer twice, and he is exacting about sourcing: "Always use fresh, fresh, fresh. Never use frozen. That's the key." The same instinct shows in his tenders — after watching competitors shrink theirs to save on cost, he decided to make his oversized instead, reasoning simply that bigger pieces taste better.

Insider tip

No reservations; order at the counter or online. Open nightly from 4:30pm, weekend lunch from 11:30am.

03The cooking

The menu is built around three styles of fried chicken, served as wings, tenders, a whole or half bird, or stacked into a sandwich. The signature is Park's KSG — Korean Sweet Gochujang — a well-battered bird with a crackling exterior and soft, juicy meat underneath, sticky-sweet and faintly spiced rather than fiery. Alongside it sits a Nashville-style hot chicken: a twice-fried piece of thigh dusted heavily with cayenne and paprika, set on cold butter lettuce and sweet pickles with a cooling white sauce built from mustard, mayo and buttermilk. Diners choose from a roster of house sauces — truffle soy, Thai sweet chili and hot honey among them — and the kitchen's kimchi fried rice has drawn its own following as a side dish worth ordering on its own merits.

04What to order

Start with the Whole Fried Chicken, eight pieces finished in the peanut-laced KSG sauce, or the Super Tenders — three deliberately oversized pieces of chicken with a dipping sauce, built to feel generous rather than mean. The Crispy Waffle Chicken Sandwich layers bacon, KSG sauce, a Thousand Island-style slaw, pickled cucumber and mozzarella between a waffle-style bun. On the rice side, the Dirty Fried Rice arrives with truffle soy and scrambled egg folded through it. For something brothier, the chicken ramen is built on chicken chashu cooked slowly, topped with a seasoned aji tamago egg and menma — Park's two loves meeting in one bowl.

05The neighbourhood

The Amsterdam Avenue address sits deep in a residential stretch of the Upper West Side, the kind of corner spot locals treat as a standing reservation rather than a destination. The restaurant's reputation has since travelled downtown: in 2026 Chick Chick opened a second outpost inside Shaver Hall, the new food hall built into the former Lord & Taylor flagship on Fifth Avenue, alongside full-service restaurants and other chef-driven stalls. Press coverage of that opening described Chick Chick simply as the Upper West Side's established Korean-fried-chicken name, now exported to Midtown's office crowd.

06When to go and booking

The Upper West Side location runs dinner Monday to Thursday from 4:30 to 10pm, adds a lunch sitting from 11:30am to 3pm on Fridays and weekends, and closes slightly earlier on Sundays. There is no reservations platform; it operates on walk-ins and online pickup and delivery orders. The Shaver Hall counter keeps longer hours, open from 11am into the evening seven days a week, which makes it the better bet for a fast weekday lunch in Midtown.

For a weekend. For a lifetime.