BBC noodles with basil
Noodles had a good q and clams were nice and tender, but like @moonboy403 and @attran99, after a few bites it was really salty. Maybe the clams weren’t soaked long enough to desalt them?
toishan style fried rice. Taco truck for scale
Really liked the chinese sausage and baby dried shrimp. Unfortunately the rice was too clumpy. Too much water when first cooking the rice?
How much is that truck?
$45, the aroma of freshly fried shrimp tacos is free.
there needs to be some more love for @JLee’s green curry with thai eggplant and shrimp balls in the deli fridge. it has just the right amount of heat, sweetness, and funk and the eggplant and shrimp balls are perfectly cooked. one of the best dishes i’ve had on the menu @J_L, @attran99, @NYCtoLA , @TheCookie, @butteredwaffles
I still have the panang in my freezer for a rainy day.
Got this a couple of weeks back. Really tasty, as you mentioned. A great balance of flavors. Those shrimp balls are outstanding. Springy, fresh-shrimp texture and enough shrimp taste to distinguish themselves from the curry.
Maybe I will finally pick up their Mapo Tofu this weekend.
Forgot to mention it freezes and reheats very well, just pop it in the microwave and it’s piping hot again.
Oh and there’s 
this weekend.
Damn. Tomato Beef is one of my favorites.
One of guys better have this dish for me!
Finally tried out @JLee’s Hainan chicken. It is indeed excellent as everyone have been saying all along. Every single piece of chicken, even the breast pieces, is silky smooth and tender which is a hallmark of great a Hainan chicken. This shall be my go-to chicken from now on!
On a side note, there are two things I think, as much as I love the current iteration of Hainan chicken, can potentially be improved upon even though there seemingly isn’t a rival in sight in LA. The first is the flaccid skin. Traditionally, the ideal skin of a great Hainan chicken should be taut, elastic, and having a layer of jelly sitting just below the skin. Perhaps the chicken’s skin is inherently thin and lacking fat? The second potential improvement is the use of yellow feathered chicken, known for its robust chicken flavor and longer maturation period, rather than the meatier but less flavorful Mary’s chicken.
From left to right, we have ginger scallion oil, a 
sauce with great balance of heat, sweetness & tanginess, as well as a sweet soy sauce. The ginger scallion oil is can have extra oomph by using chicken fat but I don’t think any restaurant in LA does this.
Glossy, fluffy, intensely garlicky, and superb fragrance from chicken fat. Chicken rice is the essence of the whole dish to me!
Slightly pink and not 100% cooked. This is the way it should be done.
You can tell that it’s 
just by looking at the cross section of the muscle fiber.
In reference to your comment about the yellow feather chickens which is the chinese name (in American commercial terms we’d refer to them as brown Indian Chickens) that breed will have a tighter and thicker skin which is has a better ability to hold chicken “jelly” underneath the skin. I dont use them for two reasons:
costs - average brown indian chicken will costs about the same if not slightly more per bird than a the typical white pullets (which is what a Marys, Jidori, foster farms chicken will be based on). If I were to use them then in order to serve the same portion size I’d have to charge at least $18 for a plate based on my costs and food percentage target figures.
difficulty in cooking, brown indians are a bit trickier to cook and their texture is much less tender than white pullets. How many customers would appreciate the texture? I’m not sure but honestly brown indians are better suited to serving as white cut chicken instead of hainan plate because with the 3 sauces and the garlic rice the natural flavor of the chicken would be overwhelmed and you’d just end up noticing the tougher meat. I’ve rarely seen them used for chicken and rice plates in other countries like Singapore and Thailand but in Chinese restaurants I have seen brown indians specifically named on the menu for white cut chicken.
Maybe there will be a option and opportunity down the line but for now I don’t want to take on the extra costs and work for something most people may not appreciate. The fact that my version of the dish still has to be compared to low quality versions like Savoy shows how far the market has to come in terms of learning to appreciate it.
Thanks for sharing your perspective!
Agreed.
Agreed again on Singapore. They use their breed of white chicken.
Indeed there are ways to go for the city to appreciate higher quality Chinese food.
I’ve dug a little further. The Chinese typically use two types of chicken for Hainan chicken: “three-yellow” chicken (三黃雞) and wenchang chicken (文昌雞). I was under the impression that both fall under the category of yellow-feathered chicken but I could totally be wrong since I’m not a pro. Thoughts? Perhaps @beefnoguy can help me out with the categorization since he knows much more than I do.
@JLee your chicken looks delicious but are you concerned about food borne illness resulting from the doness of your the chicken?
As I understand it the the chances of contaminated chicken is much higher than typical meat processing (pork and beef) for a couple reasons, the muscle fiber structure of the chicken, contamination during the de feather process, the way the innards are removed, and the water chilling process afterwards.
Not trying to cause a panic just genuinely curious on your thoughts.
Marys chickens are air chilled btw not water chilled
I love eating steak at the USDA recommended safe temp of 145.
Serious Eats did a whole thing about sous vide-ing chicken breast. I can’t speak specifically to PRD’s Hainan, but color doesn’t necessarily correlate with ‘doneness,’ and pasteurization is a temperature and time curve. I had no idea that held at an internal temp of 155, for example, chicken breast is good after basically 48 seconds.
(scroll down a bit. there’s a whole chart and graph and cooking times and pasteurization.)
Going to have to buy a sous vide machine!
Damn
