Le Freak’s chicken burgers take diners on culinary tour

While most burger joints in Seoul pride themselves on high-quality beef patties and homemade buns, Le Freak takes a different approach as an unprecedented gourmet burger.

Le Freak, which opened its first branch in Seongsu in 2019, specializes in chicken burgers.

Its signature Nashville Hot Chicken Burger is a simple chicken burger filled with red cabbage coleslaw and a crispy hot-fried chicken thigh sprinkled with spicy powder -- you can choose from three different levels of spiciness. But Le Freak releases a different variety of chicken burgers every month, giving it a Korean twist or a gourmet touch.

June’s Le Freak special burger is Chicken Diane – a long brioche bun and grilled chicken topped with Diane cream sauce, grilled asparagus, mushrooms and mashed potato. Chicken Diane is Le Freak’s 30th special chicken burger to be released.

Some of their previous special chicken burgers have used ingredients that are rarely used in burgers: minari or water celery, cilantro, lotus root chips and zucchini, to name a few. Not just that, the way they cook the chicken for these special burgers is highly creative – samgye chicken confit, nurungji chicken, Pad Thai chicken or even Japanese-style chicken tsukune.

These gourmet burgers not only feel like a nice, filling meal, but the way Le Freak experiments with burgers creates a different kind of joy and a feeling of anticipation for customers.

Its side dishes, which also change seasonally, differentiate Le Freak from other burger places as well.

Using seasonal, simple ingredients like potatoes, cherry tomatoes, eggplant or butternut squash, small plates give a variety of tastes when one might feel like finishing a whole burger is a bit too much.

Of its five side dishes, one or two are "special plates," meaning that they are only served during that particular month or a little longer than that. This month’s side menu includes grilled cabbage topped with grated parmesan cheese and thick bacon chunks.

What’s unique inside the American diner-style interior themed in red and black is that all visitors are offered a warm towel at their table, creating a feeling that they are being served at a fine dining restaurant. In a similar context, Le Freak offers two kinds of desserts – s’mores and pies that use seasonal fruits like cherry – to make sure that customers top off their meal with a nice dessert.

Le Freak currently runs four branches, three in Seoul and one in Daejeon: Seongsu-dong, Yongsan-gu, at The Hyundai Seoul in Yeouido, and at the Shinsegae Department Store in Daejeon.

Le Freak is open daily except Mondays from 11:30 a.m. to 9 p.m., with a break from 3 p.m. to 5:30 p.m. Find out more via Le Freak's Instagram, @le_freak_burger