Kuku Korean fried chicken opens in Roslyn Heights
The seafood scallion pancake and the pork belly wraps are two great appetizers at Kuku in Roslyn Heights. Credit: Newsday/Andi Berlin
Roslyn has a stellar option for Korean food, now that one of the island's top Korean restaurants has opened its long-awaited location. Restaurateur James Chen, who lives in Roslyn Heights, has been looking to open a Long Island branch of his Queens-based Kuku Korean fried chicken brand for several years now.
He and chef/business partner Chris Pak had their sights on the former Attilio’s Pizza on Mineola Avenue, but permitting issues delayed the space for three and a half years. In the meantime, they managed to open their largest Kuku location yet inside the former Ting Asian fusion restaurant in Huntington. With its atriumlike roof and dialed in renditions of Korean homestyle classics, the Huntington location won our hearts and is currently on Newsday's list of best new restaurants of 2025.
But the Roslyn location proved to be trickier than expected ... The previous pizzeria was not considered a full restaurant, Chen said, so they had to go through zoning boards before constructing the entire kitchen and dining room from scratch.
"Huntington is more like cosmetic work, but Roslyn is, you rebuilt the whole entire house from the ground up," he said.
But now both are open. The Roslyn location is smaller and more low-key, much like the brand's other locations in Long Island City and Forest Hills, Queens. Unlike Huntington, there isn't a sushi bar, but the rest of the menu is pretty similar.
They had run out of Korean fried chicken during a recent visit, which was shortly after the NBA Finals. But that's OK because Kuku also specializes in homestyle dishes like hot stone bibimbaps, silken tofu stews and noodle soups of the hot, and cold variety. The kudzu noodles ($18.99) impressed just as much as the first time. The dish is a riff on the iconic cold noodle slushy called naengmyeon, with chewy black noodles that the server cuts with scissors, letting them fall into the refreshing icy broth. You won't find this nearly anywhere, so it's pretty cool that you can have it in Roslyn.
Kuku, 96 Mineola Ave., Roslyn Heights, 516-688-0218, eatkuku.com. Open 11:30 a.m. to 10 p.m. daily.
Andi Berlin is from Arizona and does not know where she is going. But when she gets there, she’ll find something beautiful and delicious that the world needs to taste.
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