Dippin Chicken Opens in East Norwalk with Fast Casual Korean Fried Chicken
Fast casual fried chicken is a hot craze that’s seemingly not cooling off anytime soon.
Haven Hot Chicken, Birdcode Hot Chicken, the new to Connecticut Dave’s Hot Chicken, and smaller spots like Stamford’s Cwispy Chicken are proof of that.
But even newer to the coop is Dippin Chicken in East Norwalk where Korean fried chicken is their menu’s centerpiece.
Founded by Robert Lee, now a Stamford resident, but grew up in New York City, and his partner Oscar Garcia, who connected four ago when they created Tada Noodles, a Korean-Chinese noodle concept.
“We were at Smorgasburg, Queens Night Market, and Bryant Park Holiday Market,” Lee says. “Originally it was going to be delivery only with a tagline, ‘Tada! Your noodles are here!’ Kinda corny but it ended up working out for us without that. At Tada, we had a Korean fried chicken dish and it became our most popular item, hands down.”
Locals will recognize Dippin Chicken’s location as the former Norwalk Pizza & Pasta which moved nearby to 13 Winfield Street.
It’s not hard to figure out where Dippin Chicken origin story begins, but Lee’s is a bit different, as he’s didn’t come from a hospitality industry background, but a finance one. In 2014, Lee quit his job at J.P. Morgan and entered the nonprofit sector full time.
That’s where he got a taste of the hospitality industry. Sort of.
Lee is the co-founder and CEO of Rescuing Leftover Cuisine, a nonprofit with nine branches and headquartered in NYC, that rescues leftover food from establishments and donates it to those who are food insecure, something that Lee can related to in his youth. To date, Rescuing Leftover Cuisine has rescued 20 million pounds (and counting) of leftover food that would have otherwise gone to waste.
Food was something Lee “did on the side” with Tada Noodles, and now again, in Norwalk with Dippin Chicken.
Much like the other fried chicken joints, the menu is straightforward and short. The difference? The fry, the sauces, and eclectic sides you may not have experienced at the others.
“We use potato starch and some other seasonings that we want to keep secret,” Lee says. “It’s double fried, super crispy, and juicy. It’s also all about the sauces—they’re all homemade and there’s a Korean twist to every sauce we have. Gochujang, which is a classic, Korean galbi, and, like, we’re chopping fresh herbs to throw into our miso ranch right now.”
The pick of chicken is up to you. Get your Korean fried bird in wing form, boneless chunks (not quite tendies), or a double dredged, double fried (of course) breast that comes on Korean milk bread with yellow radish slaw.
Whichever chicken option you go with, the same philosophy applies…DIP IT. It’s not named Dippin Chicken for no reason.
On the side are fries, but you expected that. Or you can spice and funk them up and make those fries kimchi fries, or you can skip the potatoes and go the kimchi fried rice route, but maybe you’re into corn cheese—not elotes, but rather buttery corn in melted Monterey Jack cheese, something Lee says is extremely popular in Korea.
Korean chips and a few sodas are available here, too.
As is homemade dalgona, a baking soda-sugar confection imprinted with a cookie cutter. The shape in the center is a game where you try to break off pieces around it without destroying the image in the middle.
Whether the menu, or the concept will expand or not, Lee is keeping an open mind to all possibilities, even very early on.
“I’d like to grow more, but focusing on this one for now,” he says. “One day, if we do have multiple locations, I would love to ferment our own kimchi. I’m sure we’d have to get the specifics from the health department to do that. And we’re not closed off to expanding the menu. Right now, we’re keeping with the quality of the food we have right now. I’d like to add a salad.”
I interrupt and ask about the possibility of a veggie sandwich.
“Mushroom. Maybe. Yeah, we thought about that.”
236 East Avenue, Norwalk
203.286.6355, dippinchicken.com
