Soko Bag brings Korean fried chicken to the Philly suburbs

Soko Bag, in its first weeks of selling beer and Korean fried chicken from a former pizza parlor in Phoenixville, has an international backstory.

Shea Roggio, who grew up nearby, met South Korean-born J.H. “Alice” Chang in Dubai in 2017. He was working for a company selling green-screen photography to theme parks, and she was a ship broker moving goods all around the world.

Laid off during the pandemic, they flew to Korea. As they got off the plane in Seoul, they were hungry and found a sports bar serving twice-fried Korean fried chicken and beer. Though it was 4:30 in the morning, the place was packed with people chomping boneless chicken and watching international sports on TV.

Roggio said he then knew that their career move would be opening a similar shop near his hometown.

No matter that they had no experience in the restaurant industry “except for me working at Kentucky Fried Chicken — the old KFC — when I was in high school for $5.75 an hour,” Roggio said. “And that didn’t last too long.”

In Gumi, Chang’s mother helped them to develop recipes. Roggio went to school to learn Korean. Meanwhile, the couple married and had a baby boy in December 2021. Roggio flew home to scout locations and set up the business.

For advice, he looked up his high school friend David Lee, who owns Pizza Jawn and now Bar Jawn in Manayunk. “I’m just still so humbled that he was willing to take me in when I said I wanted to get this business,” Roggio said. “He said, ‘Look before you go into a brick-and-mortar. Come work with me for six months. Try the product, nail the food cost, make sure people like it, make sure you enjoy what you’re doing, because otherwise you’re going to invest a quarter-million-plus and you’re going to hate yourself.’”

Once Chang and their son joined him in Pennsylvania in 2022, they began pop-ups and raising money from their family.

Roggio’s first cousin Miah Roggio heard about it. He was a mechanical engineer for Boeing in Seattle and an avid homebrewer. “He literally told me that he got bored building airplanes and wanted to join us,” Shea Roggio said.

“Well, eventually I get bored of a lot of things,” Miah Roggio said.

With that, Soko Bag had its brewer, and another investor. The restaurant has a brewery license, enabling it to serve its own Soko Bag’s Thirsty Friend (canned for now by Animated Brewing Co. in Coatesville) as well as beer from other breweries and spirits from Pennsylvania distilleries.

Miah Roggio, working on a tiny system in the basement, has started with a hazy blond ale and intends to ramp up production. He said he’d be making seasonal beers with pawpaws and cherries from his backyard trees. This week, he is working at Animated, brewing chocolate Belgium stout from his own recipe and with his own ingredients.

The project, in the long-dormant Sal’s Pizza Box, took nine months to build out, much longer to open than they had expected. “We ended up spending over $40,000 just on upgrading all of the electric,” he said.

They had to dig trenches in the concrete floor to accommodate new bar drains. “We rented these 24-inch concrete blades, got a 95-pound jackhammer and a 65-pound jackhammer, and we just cranked at it for three days,” he said. That yielded 12,000 pounds of concrete, piled outside. “I never even thought how we’re going to get rid of the concrete,” he said. They had to pay someone to pick it up.

Soko Bag, a pub affiliate with the Philadelphia Union, is stocked with sports memorabilia from men’s and women’s sports. It sells trading cards and offers small packs of giveaway cards for kids.

The dining room has its curiosities. There’s an old-fashioned Coke bottle vending machine. They commissioned a large painting by artist Russell Mason, depicting Philadelphia sports heroes in a pose resembling The Last Supper. Signs proclaim “welcome” in Korean.

In a nod to Sal Mannino Sr., who operated the pizzeria from 1979 till 2012, they installed a bronze plaque outside in his memory.

Soko Bag’s first two weeks have gone mostly smoothly, after Day One, when an overworked fryer threatened to ignite and forced a shutdown. Their chicken orders are 1,000 pounds at a time.

Customers, who line up before the 3 p.m. opening Wednesday to Friday and noon Saturday and Sunday, nibble on comp sweet and savory bagged snacks and order beers and drinks while waiting for their orders; the twice-fried chicken, sold by the half-pound ($12) and full pound ($20), takes 15 minutes or more.

Right now, they’re only serving chicken as they navigate production; eventually, the menu will include chicken cheesesteaks, salads, dumplings, and desserts.

Some customers opt for the plain (bamboo salt imported from Korea), but the snow chicken (coated in an aged white Cheddar powder) is an umami bomb. Sauces include gochujang, kimchi aioli, blue cheese, and buffalo. It’s best eaten there, but will stay fairly crispy for a half-hour. It can be reheated in an air fryer. Early sellouts have been common so far.

So far, so good, they think. “If you’re doing that right,” said Miah Roggio, referring to the chicken, “then people will come back for the other stuff.”