Chicken shop apologizes, removes dish from menu after customer complains of stench

A picture of the problematic chicken dish from Korean chicken brand 60 Gye Chicken that a customer uploaded on Tuesday. [SCREEN CAPTURE]

Jang’s Food, operator of Korean chicken franchise 60 Gye Chicken, has apologized after a customer filed a complaint about a stench in their fried chicken order earlier this week.

An anonymous online post uploaded Tuesday said that the customer ordered fried chicken gizzards for his mother, who told him she tasted “something rotten” immediately after taking her first bite.

The poster also uploaded a photo, which seems to show an unidentifiable yellowish substance within the chicken dish.

The company retrieved the dish and announced on Friday that, upon inspection, the odor came from the store’s failure to properly discard the inner layers of the chicken gizzard.

“[The smell] was not from debris or secretion, but due to inner layers from the chicken gizzard,” the company said. “We usually remove the layers before cooking because it can affect the taste of the fried food and its color and exterior can be unpleasant in the eyes of the customers.”

The company said it made a separate apology and offered compensation to the customer.

“We will temporarily take the dish off the menu until we can be sure that similar incidents do not recur in the future,” the company said. “We again apologize to the customer and to others who have purchased our dishes and will do our best not to inconvenience our customers.”

BY LEE JAE-LIM [lee.jaelim@joongang.co.kr]