• Fried chicken at the Food Studio’s Hot Chook

Fried chicken is one of those universal comfort foods; from the crispy batter-fried chicken of the Southern US to Thai and Korean fried chicken to India’s Chicken 65 to the good old Sri Lankan fried chicken which doesn’t have a batter but is still crispy and delicious all the same. 

No food court experience is complete without fried chicken and the Food Studio’s answer to fried chicken is Hot Chook, an eatery at the Colombo City Centre’s Food Studio that focuses on fried chicken and burgers. 

Chook is a word that originated as an Australian slang term for chicken and Hot Chook Co-Owner Umal Perera shared with The Sunday Morning Brunch that he had picked up the word during his studies in Australia. Perera, who is also the mind behind some other popular Colombo-based restaurants like Sushi Bar Samurai, is very hands-on with Hot Chook, spending a lot of time developing recipes and, especially, in-house sauces that can elevate dishes and make them unique. 

Brunch was given a taste of some of Hot Chook’s best dishes ahead of a revamp of the Hot Chook menu, which we can now confirm is in place and ready to go. 

Our Hot Chook gastronomic journey began with one of its newest dishes – the dynamite seafood – a mix of batter-fried prawns and calamari bathed in Hot Chook’s take on dynamite sauce (we asked what made the sauce dynamite, but were told it was a trade secret). 

Regardless of what goes into the sauce, the dynamite seafood was one of our favourite dishes – the batter was crispy and well seasoned and bathed with sauce that made that special kind of dish that you just can’t stop eating. Our foray into Hot Chook snacks also saw us try their loaded fries – fries that come with a generous topping of mayonnaise and sriracha sauce. This too was a very good dish, but it only comes in the form of sweet potato fries, so fair warning. 

We also tried out another one of Hot Chook’s newest additions – its take on Caesar salad. And while a fried chicken eatery offering Caesar salad is a bit questionable, the salad itself was wonderful and offers a relatively healthy option to someone craving tasty chicken but not wanting to binge on fried chicken. 

Now, on to the burgers; we tried two of Hot Chook’s signatures – the OG Chook and the Prawn-O, and these burgers do not disappoint. The OG Chook – a hunk of batter-fried chicken, dipped in Nashville Hot Oil and topped with slaw salad and a mix of Hot Chook’s signature slices, is a handful. One of those messy burgers, but if you take it on, you are most likely to be satisfied.

The Prawn-O is a little easier to eat but still deliciously messy, featuring a crumb-fried seasoned prawn patty topped with tartar sauce and some of Hot Chook’s magic sauces. 

We finished off our foray into the world of fried chicken with Hot Chook’s fried chicken. Admittedly, we found the fried chicken not as good as some of the other dishes we sampled at Hot Chook, but this may have been down to us already being well sated, having sampled all the other dishes. On its own, without sauce, the fried chicken can be dry, so we recommend taking the time to explore the different unique sauces Hot Chook has to offer to pair with your fried chicken.