14.312 Sunsal Jikhwa

Cycle 14 – Item 312

13 (Mon) November 2023

Sunsal Jikhwa

2.0

at Matccho Hwadak

-Changgok, Sujeong, Seongnam, Gyeonggi, Republic of Korea-

w IZ

Matccho Hwadak is a restaurant.  Specializes in grilled chicken.  Opened a couple months ago.  Part of a franchise chain, which started in February 2023, currently with 9 locations (the website claims the contract has been signed for the 20th store).

Located in Sinseong Tower, corner property (where Tous Les Jours used to be – apparently, they kept the dark green storefront).

A growing theme on GMTD is my abhorrence of straight-to-franchise restaurant chains.  As previously discussed (see generally 14.118 Rice-Noodle Pho with Beef Brisket), the food is manufactured to be consistent across locations, fool-proof to prepare, and unoffending to anyone, which isn’t bad per se, but the resulting product tends therefore to be unexciting, unimaginative, soulless.

The splash page opens with pop-up banners boasting various business specs.

Like the corporate websites for most franchise chains, the Mattcho Hwadak website contains no information about the menu items or culinary themes or company history – i.e., things that customers would be interested in – but rather sales data, royalty payments, application processes – i.e., things that potential owners would be interested in.

The tabs at the top of the website include: company introduction (doesn’t mention anything about who founded it, where it’s based, etc, just numbers), keys to success, competitive branding, franchise benefits, franchise questions.

The website also includes a YouTube video purporting to show how popular the restaurants are, though I strongly suspect that the external queue and internal crowd were staged, just to shoot the footage.  The video only shows one location – in fact, our very own Wirye restaurant, which, I drive by nearly every day, since its opening, and I’ve never seen more than a handful of people inside.  Judging by the bright sunlight, the occasion appears to be lunch – nobody in a residential neighborhood is going to line up for a restaurant at lunchtime, even on a weekend.

Also suspicious that many in line are holding parasols, as if they’d known in advance that they would be standing under the sun for a long time while the footage was taken.

The food was predictably unexciting, unimaginative, soulless.  Decent flavor, with a strong wokhei aroma – “jikhwa = direct fire” (see below) – but otherwise nondescript.  Couldn’t decide if it were more anju or meal – the 2 other tables had young children, who were eating the chicken with rice, which is sold separately.  I will never return.

The menu was surprisingly limited, with only one variety available, either bone-in or boneless (sunsal), though the blank spots on the page suggest other varieties were sold out for the evening – didn’t care to ask.

For infinitely superior grilled chicken, I would go to Gye Moim (see 14.170 Grilled (Salt + Soy) Chicken), where the food is exciting, imaginative, soulful.

As proudly shown in a looped video on monitors in the restaurant, the wokhei is fake, produced not by the flames coming from below and shooting into the wok, which takes proper gear and actual skill, but rather from a fixed torch above (sorta like how I do it at home with a hand torch (see for example 13.182 Egg Fried Rice).

(See also GLOBAL FOOD GLOSSARY)

(See also RESTAURANTS IN KOREA)

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