Osigye Serves Deboned Whole-Chicken Hot Pot on the Third Floor of Madang Mall

Lunch-time chicken, deboned before it reaches you, on the third floor of Madang Mall.

Osigye opened in April on the third floor of Madang Mall at 621 S. Western Avenue, taking the space that held Aki Shabu until it closed in March. It is run by a mother and her two daughters, and it specializes in dak han mari, the whole-chicken hot pot that fills entire blocks of Seoul but has been thin on the ground in Koreatown. Several diners have called it the first of its kind here.

The name explains the food

Osigye is written in Sino-Korean characters that mean lunch-time chicken, and it is pronounced Oh-shee-gyeh. You will see it spelled Oshige, Oshigye and O'Shigye depending on where you look. Koreatown LA Directory notes the detail that matters most at the table: the specialty is samgyetang, the ginseng chicken soup, served with the poultry already deboned. If you have ever wrestled a whole bird apart with metal chopsticks in a shared pot, you know why that is worth paying for.

What to order

The whole birds arrive in a bubbling broth of your choice: original, spicy, or a pesto version that is the outlier on the menu. A half-chicken set runs as a weekday lunch special, and the kitchen also offers a North Korean style preparation.

Rice cake and noodles come with the pot. The sides list runs spicy buckwheat noodles with crab, an oyster flower and seaweed salad, minari shrimp pancake and kimchi pancake, alongside banchan.

What we have our eye on: the finish. When the pot is nearly done the kitchen makes rice porridge at the table from what is left in it, which is the part of dak han mari that rarely survives the trip across the Pacific. Plan on two people minimum, since the menu is built for sharing. FJM will report back after a visit.

Visiting

Osigye is at 621 S. Western Avenue, Unit 301, Los Angeles, CA 90005, on the third floor of Madang Mall in Koreatown between Wilshire and Sixth. Reach the restaurant at (213) 315-5790.

• Hours: 11 a.m. to 9:30 p.m. daily, which is unusually consistent for the neighborhood.

• Parking: three hours free in the Madang Mall structure, which on Western Avenue is the whole argument.

• Reservations: accepted, and worth making on a weekend. A Tuesday night walk-in is straightforward.

• Also: delivery and takeout offered, and the room is wheelchair accessible.

Menus and details are at osigye.com.

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