Coqodaq (Again)
Fancy fried chicken, but this time for brunch.
It’s probably the coldest day I’ve ever experienced in New York so far… and I’m hanging in there. At the beginning of this year, I found myself reading about the psychology behind New Year’s resolutions. It turns out, the start of a new period of time, however arbitrary, does prime our brains to strive for change… or something along those lines.
Well, it’s February now, and I’m distressed by how quickly another month has gone by. I had friends over for dinner the other night, and we talked about the idea that one can slow down time through intentionally having new experiences, rather than falling into the same routine day after day. I don’t think I fell into the trap of doing too little during the unforgiving weeks of winter after the holidays—I went to California and back, during which I enjoyed a solo drive up into the mountains where time felt the slowest it’s ever felt—but somehow, here we are. Time passed quickly regardless.
We’re firmly into 2026, but I’m trying to seize the energy of reinvention wherever I can find it. Perhaps Lunar New Year later this month is another arbitrary temporal event to welcome a fresh start…
Similar to how we, as people, constantly reshape ourselves in an effort to strive towards some kind of perfection, restaurants too do the same thing. And yet (so far), I’ve only ever reviewed each restaurant once. I do it out of consideration for you all—I assume you don’t want to read my thoughts on the same place over and over again—but it seems a little unfair, no?
Well, I don’t ever set out to re-review restaurants, and it seems a bit ridiculous for the restaurant I do write multiple reviews about to be… a fancy fried chicken restaurant… but Coqodaq quietly launched a brunch menu sometime last year and it’s absolutely stunning.
Viraj has been bugging me about a Coqodaq reservation ever since I went without him two years ago, so I’ve been (very) casually monitoring reservations. I thought Coqodaq was better than expected when I went for dinner, but perhaps not the type of restaurant that would be still difficult to dine at two years later. Maybe I underestimate our collective appetite for a good gimmick…
Over the holidays, I spent hours browsing and making assorted reservations. Not necessarily to go to all of them, but to just ponder the possibility. During this time, I made a reservation for brunch at Coqodaq for four on the first Sunday of the new year.
It turned out that it was extremely difficult to find people who were free for brunch on that day in particular—as I was fighting off jet lag, most others were just getting back to the city. I briefly considered posting on my Instagram to recruit people to fill out the other two seats at our table, and then almost canceled my reservation. But, in the nick of time, my friends Allison and Samuel joined us.
The most important thing to know about Coqodaq’s brunch is that it transcends their reputation as a restaurant for fried chicken, and that’s really why I felt like it was deserving of a new review. Think of their brunch menu instead as a vaguely chicken-themed meal—you can have their signature fried chicken that’s the star of their dinner menu, which comes in the same fun bucket, but their entrees also cover the savory (fried chicken and waffles), the sweet (buttermilk pancakes), the healthy-ish (kale Waldorf salad), and the… cold (acai bowl). (If anyone’s ever ordered the acai bowl, please report back to me.)
There are many brunch foods that I like, both sweet and savory, but what’s challenging about brunch is that you usually only get one dish, when what I would really like is a few bites of every brunch food all at once. Brilliantly, Coqodaq’s brunch is served just like that: their prix fixe, dubbed “The Bruket List,” is a hefty amount of food at a fairly reasonable price ($58 per person) and includes a bunch of fun bites ahead of your entree selection. The “Coqo D’oeuvres” were absolutely the best part of the meal, and in my opinion, it’s imperative to experience them together, rather than à la carte.
Our meal started with an overwhelming parade of french toast soldiers, hash brown and salmon “rillettes,” shrimp salad lettuce cups, deviled eggs, kimbap, chicken consommé, and chicken croquettes, perfectly portioned so that we would get a taste of each. It’s so unbelievably fun to have an assortment of foods to try—at least I think so—and the execution of these brunch classics (and others) is excellent, all with a Korean influence. As we heaped salmon and roe onto crispy disks of hash brown, and then wiped sticks of delicately fried milk bread through a house-made Tahitian vanilla crème anglaise, I thought to myself… this is what it means to dine like royalty.
I went rogue and got the kale Waldorf salad, with the plan to eat everyone else’s fried chicken. It’s not surprising that their fried chicken is good—and their fried chicken with waffles, even better—but, this was a very good salad! The Hainanese-style chicken carried the dish, but overall, like every other item, it was a flawless execution, with the kale cut into thin ribbons and seasoned evenly throughout. I also stole some bites of Samuel’s fried chicken and waffles, and if you really want to go all in on the theming of a fried chicken brunch, it’s the obvious choice. With fried chicken so good you need a perfect waffle to compliment it… and yeah, of course they nail that.
Also, I got The Matcha Colada to drink: matcha, coconut milk, maple, lion´s mane. Duh! And yes, unfortunately, it was excellent but I can never have it again unless I go back for brunch.
The takeaway here is simple: Coqodaq’s brunch is spectacular—a whole lot of fun packed into one meal. Unless you’re a fried chicken purist, I’d recommend it over dinner. Trust me!
Bite It!
Book Coqodaq on Resy here. Reservations open 14 days in advance at 10 a.m., but if you don’t have a specific time you want, any time on the day reservations open should be fine to get a table.