There are times when fried chicken means a napkin tucked into your collar and Wet Ones at the ready as you dig your hand into a cardboard bucket of the stuff.

But there are other times when fried chicken is savored in a chic minimalist dining room with mood lighting, a glass of French Champagne, and a tin of osetra caviar with a mother-of-pearl spoon to complete the picture.

If an elevated fried chicken dinner, one with Korean flourishes, is what you crave, Michelin-starred Ssal in San Francisco has now got you covered.

Your appetite just has to hold out until after its usual tasting menu service concludes and its yasik or Korean late-night eating culture menu takes over afterwards on weeknights. Although in South Korea that usually means midnight, you won’t have to wait quite that long here, but just until about 9 p.m. or 9:30 p.m.

Last week, I had the chance to experience the delicious, late-night fried chicken menu that debuted in May. The menu was so popular that all reservations for that entire month were snapped up in only a couple of days.

Given the incredible response, Chef-Owner Junsoo Bae has decided to continue it at least through June. They’re still working out the details, which may be tweaked a bit. So, just monitor the restaurant’s website and Tock reservations system to get the latest on what specific days in June the fried chicken menu will be offered.

It’s $125 per person, which includes half a fried chicken, 1/2 an ounce of caviar, a Hokkaido uni-topped gimbap, pork sausage wrapped in perilla leaves, and the classic Korean rice cakes known as tteokbokki.

While beer and wines are available by the glass or bottle, the staff recommends ordering at least one glass of Champagne, because bubbles and caviar are natural partners, and bubbles with fried chicken are definitely inspired ones. I enjoyed a Pierre Paillard Champagne Grand Cru Rosé Extra Brut Les Terres Roses, which was a deep rosy pink in color, and powerful on the palate with vivid notes of strawberry and raspberry.

Fried chicken holds a special place in Ssal’s history. A graduate of the Culinary Institute of America, Bae went on to cook at Michelin two-starred Blue Hill at Stone Barns in New York, Michelin-starred Grammercy Tavern in New York, and Michelin three-starred The Restaurant at Meadowood in St. Helena.

In 2019, he and his wife, Hyunyoung Bae, a former line cook at Grammercy Tavern, realized their dream of owning their own restaurant when they opened Ssal. They named it after the Korean word for “uncooked rice’’ in tribute to Bae’s grandparents who owned a rice store in Korea, where the whole extended family would help out during busy times.

When 2020 rolled around, though, Ssal, like every other restaurant, was forced to temporarily close down because of the pandemic. For a year and a half, Bae and his wife pivoted to cooking fried chicken for takeout — a decision that not only helped them survive, but to even raise enough money to remodel the restaurant once they finally could fully reopen.

While Bae prefers that his seasonal $258 tasting menu, rooted in European techniques and complex Korean flavors, be the real star at Ssal, he knows there’s no denying how much people loved his fried chicken. So, he decided to bring it back this way, marking this the first time the fried chicken has actually been served in the restaurant’s dining room.

And what chicken it is. It arrives in a large ceramic bowl and cut into neat pieces. There’s no dairy involved in the batter, just a blend of flours, including corn flour, potato starch, and soybean flour, which results in a light, airy and deeply golden crust that’s crispy through and through.

The chicken, itself, is quite moist, and so flavorful on its own that you might find you don’t necessarily need to use the accompanying soy-garlic, and sweet, fermented chili sauces.

Caviar and fried chicken have become the “it” pairing at so many restaurants lately. Sure, it’s bougie and not a necessary garnish. But dollop some one and take a bite, and you’ll have to agree that the tiny eggs do add a pop of salinity and umami, without turning overly salty, to create even more depth of flavor.

Large green shiso leaves hold a slice of soondae pork sausage that’s usually made with pork blood. That’s omitted here, with the pork instead mixed with glass noodles. It’s a spicy bite that gets a fresh, minty-basil whoosh from the perilla.

The gimbap is a maki-like rice roll wrapped in a unique seaweed from South Korea, gamtae, that resembles fine grass clippings in an Easter basket. Its taste is like nori crossed with grass. There are crunchy carrots inside and a big lobe of uni artfully arranged overtop.

The cylindrical tteokbokki are crowned with thin slices of fish cake, all afloat in a deep red sauce that may shout five-alarm fire, but don’t panic. They do pack a pretty spicy punch, as this traditional drinking food should, but it’s not incendiary. Your forehead may start to warm. Even so, you’ll find yourself reaching again and again for these delightfully chewy and bouncy rice cakes.

If you’re a late-night eater in a spendy mood, now’s the time to savor KFC of a different sort.