Your reports are always such a pleasure to read! Thank you.
Finally got around to trying Pikunico! Mrs. WireMonkey, Mama WireMonkey and Pop WireMonkey shared everything below (photo courtesy of Mama WireMonkey).
I donāt have lot to add to whatās been said above except that Iām firmly in the pro-Pikunico camp. I definitely agree that the salads are awesome texturally and tastewise and have an interesting savoriness. Mrs. WireMonkey did unfortunately think that savoriness gave them a uniformity of taste that she didnāt love which I understand. Still, I think itās more likely that now weāve surveyed all of them weāll just pick the one we like next time we visit so thatās not a problem.
As for the chicken, it could be a touch more tender but Iāve noticed that non-commodity meat sometimes has different characteristics like a slight toughness balanced by other qualities like deeper flavor and this chicken definitely had great flavor. Also, with respect to @Chowseeker1999 in the OP I found the chicken to be almost obscenely crunchy rather than crispy. Iāve literally never had a louder bite of food in my life.
One worrisome thing I noticed was that we were only one of three groups eating there at noon on a Sunday. While this may account for the great quality of the food it makes me anxious about the future of the restaurant. It certainly wasnāt for lack of foot traffic generally because just around the corner Smorgasburg was absolutely crammed with people. Hopefully this was just a fluke but truly all the shops were pretty slack- walking through ROW DTLA was like being at the bottom of a canyon.
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Hi @WireMonkey,
Thanks for the report back. 
With regard to the batter, I figured it might change. When we went during the Grand Opening period Chef Kuniko mentioned that she was still tweaking the batter recipe. She wanted to make it gluten-free for consideration to those that couldnāt have gluten, and I noticed the batter actually change by our 4th visit (but I didnāt write about it yet). So itās good to know her batter is now a crunchy variety (ours during the Grand Opening was definitely on the lighter, crisp side). Thanks.
I might have been a touch facetious about the subjective merits of crispiness vs. crunchiness in my reply. 
Whatās for sure is itās some of the LOUDEST fried anything Iāve ever had (in a good way).
tweaking the batter recipe
Thatās interesting that sheād tweak it in consideration for those that donāt eat gluten- itās my understanding that potato starch coatings naturally result in a crispier/crunchier coating than your average AP flour as mentioned in a scattering of articles over the years. I thought that the resulting chicken being gluten free was just a side benefit.
Oh, also for those mentioning how small the portions were, they told us that thighs were done by weight with 1/2lb per order which was pretty substantial for us.
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