This Is The Best Place To Get Gas Station Food In Chicago
KorFusion just might be Chicago's best restaurant located in a gas station. To clarify, when I say in a gas station, I don't mean that there's a counter dishing out bulgogi right next to the aisle hawking candy and Combos. KorFusion is its own restaurant, with its own entrance, but it's in the same brick building as a Mobil station. Glance out the front windows, and take in the view of a bunch of gas pumps. "The location is not ideal," admits co-owner Peter Chung.
Inside is a different story. Sleek and spare, with just a few tables in the corner, a spartan counter with bar stools by the window, and a flat-screen TV menu that would make McDonald's proud, the space feels more like a trendy Wicker Park spot than a restaurant in a gas station across the street from the former Cabrini-Green housing project. Of course, there's a Target and luxury condos where one of the housing projects used to stand, so perhaps being confused is just part of the deal.
Speaking of which, it's hard to look at KorFusion's name and not think of the word confusion. The restaurant's name is actually an amalgamation of Korea and fusion, as in fusion cuisine. But you know what some people jokingly call fusion cuisine in general? Confusion cuisine. The problem is that most fusion places try to hammer two cuisines together without doing either particularly well. KorFusion fortunately avoids this issue by being a Korean restaurant first and foremost, with some Mexican and American accents on the side.