My husband brought an order of chicken strips ($7) from Costco and I can’t say I’m impressed. I’m not a huge fan of chicken strips in the first place, but I do get them from Safeway when they’re on sale for $5 (which happens every couple of Fridays). These ones were thicker, denser, saltier and tasted like frozen fried chicken. On the other hand, my husband found them tender and liked that the strips aren’t seasoned (with something other than salt). They come with a sauce which seems like a mixture of BBQ sauce and honey mustard. I preferred honey mustard dressing.
Tag: chicken (Page 1 of 4)
Pleasantly Surprised
Del Real meals were on sale last Friday for just $5 (out of ~$12 regular price) so I got the Chipotle Honey Chicken one. My husband has it last night and I ate the leftovers. It was great.
The meal consists of grilled chicken thighs cut into bite size pieces with a light sauce. It’s just the meat – no sides included. If you only eat the chicken it will just feed one a generous meal, but you can extend it to feed two by adding sides.
I was very surprised at just how this dish was. The chicken actually had the texture of grilled chicken and the sauce was quite nice, with only a hint of honey and spice, some smokiness and just an overall good taste.
This is the second hit I have in ready-to-heat meals from Del Real and next time they go on sale, I’ll buy and try the rest.
I absolutely love Indian food, it’s my favorite in the world, but it is the most challenging to be able to eat at home. I have always found preparing Indian food difficult – even when recipes succeed, it’s usually a lot of work to get there. Takeout has become expensive, and my last experiences with Shef (which I can no longer afford anyway), were less than brilliant. So we are left with commercial Indian food which, IMHO, sucks.
Take this Sukhi’s Butter Chicken, which my husband insists in buying at Costco when he goes shopping by himself ($16 for 2 pouches, or 4 meals if you add rice). It’s OK, but it tastes nothing like actual butter chicken.
You make it by emptying the included pouch into a bowl and microwaving for 3 minutes. As you take your first bite, the smell/taste of tikka is strong, but it manages to dissipate fairly quickly. You are left with a curry which, as most commercial tikka masala/butter chicken sauces, is way too acidic – probably from the added citric acid. The acid overwhelms any other flavor the sauce might have, hiding most spices. It is slightly spicy, so if all you want is a bit of heat, this might satisfy. For this reason, my husband actually likes it. I will add that it has a hint of sweetness, but I don’t think that improves it.
Sukhi’s is a family owned Bay Area business, so that, at least, is a plus.
Soft skin, fatty and very brined
When the kids were young, and omnivores, I used to make rotisserie chicken often. My mother in law gifted us a rotisserie many years ago, and it produced a very good and tasty chicken. Over the years, we’ve also bought our share of Costco rotisserie chickens and probably some Safeway ones as well – but as the kids became vegetarian, we sort of gave up on them. It’s thus been a long time since I even thought about buying one of this, much less at Safeway.
Still, they were on sale last Friday for $5 (from $10 regular price), in a variety of flavors, and I thought I’d give one a try. All but the “Traditional Whole Rotisserie Chicken” are actually roasted rather than rotisseried, and I’d ordered the “sweet smoky BBQ” flavor, but it wasn’t available so they substituted with the traditional rotisseried instead.
At 30 oz, the chicken is tiny – it doesn’t quite reach 2 lbs. You can’t buy such small chickens raw. But it’s definitely enough for a 3-4 people, mostly because you don’t really want to eat that much of it. The chicken was heavily brined and tasted very much of it. It had a weird, gummy texture, no doubt created by spending too much time in the brining liquid. It was fatty and not that enticing. The skin was a little overseasoned, but the flavor was fine. The problem is that it wasn’t very crispy – thus defeating the whole purpose of it being rotisseried.
I wouldn’t buy it again, even at $5, unless I was planning to use it for chicken salad or the like.
Last week, Safeway had Signature Select boneless, skinless chicken thighs on sale for $3/lb – down from the $6.50 regular price. Given how expensive groceries are now, I figured I’d give them a try. I was less than happy.
The thighs are HUGE. I’m afraid to imagine how big those chickens have to be to have such big thighs. And they are also extremely fatty. There are now laws in California that force chicken farmers to give chickens a minimum amount of space and access to the outdoors, but I can’t imagine these chickens have ever gotten any exercise. For that reason alone, I’m unlikely to buy Safeway chicken again.
On the plus side, I was able to cut the thighs into nicely sized cubes for Madura-style satay, and the chicken was quite tender.
My daughter is a huge fan of orange chicken with rice, and thus she had this frozen mandaron orange chicken when she saw it at Trader Joe’s. I’d gotten it in the past, though I tend to skew prepared food I can’t warm up in the microwave or the air fryer. You need to cook this in the oven or sautee it on the stovetop.
She wasn’t super fond of this, though I did overcook it. She thought it was fine, but not as good as what you can get in a restaurant. She wasn’t too sure she’d get it again.
The 22 oz package costs $5 and is enough for two meals. Rice is not included.
This newish Hawaiian BBQ restaurant in San Leandro has some hits and some misses.
My youngest daughter, Camila, had had a pretty tough day so when she asked that we get Hawaiian that evening, I was willing to go along with it, even though we’d eaten out a lot that week. She had specifically asked that we go to Ono Hawaiian BBQ, our closest Hawaiian joint and one we frequented when she was younger. For one reason or another we stopped going and I think it’d been several years since we’d had Ono or Hawaiian at all. So, before I ordered, I decided to look at reviews. Alas, recent ones for Ono weren’t too encouraging.
Moana Hawaiian BBQ, on the other hand, was getting great reviews – plus it was near Ono, so not that much further from our house. Reluctantly, Camila agreed to order from there. Overall, I was happy with the meal, but there were some misses. I wasn’t too comfortable ordering online, so I sent Mike to do so at the store. It was a pretty quick trip.
Moana’s menu seems to be very similar to Ono’s, even to the name of some dishes, for example, they both feature “island white fish”. They both have a family meal ($43) consisting of three meats and two sides: rice and macaroni salad. That’s what I decided to get and it turned out to be a good deal, it was a lot of food.
Camila wanted the chicken katsu, which is also one of my favorites. It consists of fried, breaded chicken served with katsu sauce. The chicken was tender and flavorful, and appropriately cooked. There was plenty of it and Camila made three meals out of it.
Mike decided on the island white fish, fried fish fillets. The fish itself was nicely seasoned, as was the breading. Mike felt the breading was too thick, though that didn’t bother me as much – and I appreciated it when I microwaved the left overs: the breading held up fairly well. I did feel the fish was crying for some lemon juice – fortunately, a few years ago a lemon tree just started growing in our side yard (I suspect a lemon from our neighbor’s tree fell there and eventually it turned into a tree), so now we have fresh lemons whenever we want them. With the lemon juice added, the fish was just delicious.
I also enjoyed the kalbi beef ($3 supplement). Restraint was clearly used in marinating them, so that they still had a grilled beef flavor, rather than just a teriyaki or similar sort of flavor that overwhelms the meat at Ono. Teriyaki sauce was served alongside them, but I felt I didn’t need it. They were also very tender and not too chewy. I very much enjoyed them.
The white rice was exactly that, rice. It serves as a conduit for the katsu and teriyaki sauces, but I see it as wasted carbs – particularly when we had so much other food.
The macaroni salad, unfortunately, was a big miss. It just lacked the flavor that the the one at Ono has. Camila definitely commented on it – and Mike had to agree it wasn’t that great. They still ate it, though.
I also ordered the malasadas ($5.50 for 10), Hawaiian donuts with a Portuguese ancestry. It’d been years since I last had one and I didn’t remember how I felt about them. It turns out, I’m not a big fan. They were lighter than a beignet, but still denser and heavier than a donut and the salty dough wasn’t particularly flavorful. I did like the crystalized sugar on top which is a big improvement over powdered sugar. Reading back on my blog, it seems like I wasn’t too fond of malasadas when I had them in Hawaii almost 20 years ago, so it’s not Moana, it’s me.
In all, it was a good experience and if it’s up to me, we’d go back. Alas, the substandard macaroni salad might make Mike and Camila prefer we go elsewhere when we next want Hawaiian.
Moana Hawaiian BBQ
14966 E 14th St
San Leandro, CA
(510) 274-5777
Daily 10:30 AM - 8:30 PM
Good chicken, but skip the biscuits
I like fried chicken. As I mentioned in a recent review, I had my first taste of it at Bob’s Big Boy restaurant my first evening in America. It wasn’t at all what I expected – breading?! – but I quickly became a fan of it. My mother doesn’t eat any poultry – her father, a doctor who served a low income population was often paid in live chickens, and she has terrible memories of having to clean them -, so it was a special treat to have it when I was growing up. After we came to America, once in a blue moon my dad would bring home a bucket of KFC, and I just swooned.
Over the years, however, I stopped being as much of a fan and fried chicken buckets did not really feature in our family dinners for the last couple of decades. So when my sister, whom we were visiting, suggested we get some Popeyes for dinner, my reaction was to look into alternatives. But it was a Monday, memorial day, and I didn’t want to go through the trouble of finding a restaurant that was open, so I acquiesced. I’m glad I did.
We ordered fried chicken for us, a chicken sandwich for my daughter and chicken strips for everyone else. My usual problem with commercial fried chicken is that it’s too salty, but this one was OK. It probably hit my personal limits for saltiness, but it didn’t go over it. The chicken itself was flavorful, and the breading was nicely seasoned and mostly stuck to the chicken. I’d probably would have waned it to be thinner, but it wasn’t too bad. The chicken was very crispy and remained that way. I didn’t eat the leftovers, so I’m not sure how it microwaved the next day. I also didn’t try any sides, so I can’t comment. My daughter liked her chicken sandwich ($6).
We were all far less fond of the biscuits. They, fortunately, didn’t have that metallic flavor of the bake-at-home biscuits, but they had a similar consistency. They were too flat, too crispy on the outside and not flaky enough. They were also too salty. KFC’s are far superior.
I was intrigued by the strawberry biscuit ($2) in their dessert menu. I had visions of a drier version of the biscuits in strawberry sauce I made years ago. Unfortunately, it was a complete bust. They use the same, overly salted biscuit butter that they use for their regular biscuits and they just include strawberries inside. It doesn’t work at all. I only took a couple of bites and threw it away.
Popeyes, like most chains nowadays, has a their own app and you can get promos with significant discounts – though I think you can only use one promo per order. We got a promo for 10 pieces of chicken, 2 sides and 5 biscuits for $26. Choosing mac & cheese as a side cost an additional $1 (!). Note, however, that you can’t specify all dark chicken if you order via the app – you need to go in person for that. We did, and had the weirdest experience. We ordered at the drive, which is “manned” by what appeared to be an Artificial Intelligence order taking program. It had the voice and speech mode of an AI tool. However, if that’s what it was, it had the best speech recognition system we’ve ever used. My daughter ordered using casual language, changing her order mid-sentence and adding specifications as we went along. And yet the AI understood exactly what she wanted – it repeated it afterwards. Could it really be AI? Let me know of your own experiences.
Now that “fried chicken” is back in my mind, I’ll likely order it again some time.
Popeyes
7635 Winnetka Ave
Los Angeles, CA 91306
(818) 338-2502
Daily 10 AM - 10 PM
A Taste of the South: Notes from a Trip to Louisiana
Great fried chicken in fun surroundings
We had two goals for our trip to Dallas: seeing the eclipse and visiting with our old friends Eddie and Arthur. They had selfishly moved back to Texas when our kids were little. I’m still really sad, and we miss them terribly.
Our first night together, Eddie and Arthur took us to one of their favorite restaurants: Babe’s Chicken Dinner House. Babe’s is a small chain of ten restaurants all in and around the Dallas-Fort Worth area; we went to the Burleson location. They are beautifully decorated with cottage-style houses and chickens everywhere. I can imagine this would be a favorite family restaurant – little girls, in particular, are likely to swoon over the decorations.
Babe’s menu is limied to fried chicken, fried chicken tenders, chicken fried steak and hickory smoked chicken (all $19), fried catfish ($20) and a vegetable plate ($11). Even in Texas they figured families often have a vegetarian they need to bring along to dinner. All meals come with sides which are served family style: house salad, green beans, corn, mashed potatoes, buttermilk biscuits and cream gravy.
Texas may not be the South per se, but coming from Louisiana I was still thinking in those terms, so I was excited to get some southern fried chicken. I’m not sure that it would differ from any other fried chicken – it seems like all our fried chicken chains originate in the South anyway, and it’s not like I make it myself (though I did try my hand at Delaware fried chicken some time back). Still, like most others at the table, I ordered the fried chicken and it was very good. The chicken was very moist, the breading was super crisp and the pieces were a nice size. The only minus is that you can only order a mixed portion or drumsticks, not just dark meat. It wasn’t a big deal, however. Alas, I didn’t try any of the other entrees. I know that Eddie got fried catfish and Arthur got the smoked chicken; they must be good given they keep ordering them when they visit.
There was so much chicken to be eaten, that we really didn’t try all the sides. The exception was the buttermilk biscuits which were excellent. They bring both honey and sorghum syrup to the table, and they were both good – the latter has a rich flavor, similar to molasses. I learned here – from Eddie – that in the south you biscuits in half and butter the whole half.
We also liked the mashed potatoes, and someone was fond of the salad as it didn’t last long, but we didn’t try the other sides.
Service was great, the waiters were very accommodating and efficient. They did not rush us out even when we stayed well over closing time. Alas, Babe’s is one of those places that likes to humiliate waiters by making them perform – apparently they force them to perform the hokey pokey for waiters. Patrons love it but waiters hate it (I asked).
Of course, the company was even better than the food but I was very happy to try this place. And boy, do we miss Eddie and Arthur.
Babe's Chicken Dinner House
120 South Main St
Burleson, TX
(817) 447-3400
M-F: 11 AM - 2 PM & 5 PM - 9 PM
Sa & Su: 11 AM - 9 PM
Notes from a New York City Foodie Trip
The halal cart phenomenon continues unabated in NYC, and with good reason.
Forget about hotdogs, for several decades now, the New York City street food par excellence has been halal fare. Originally referring to the types of foods permitted for Muslims – think Kosher but far less strict -, halal carts are understood to serve food of Mediterranean origins, mainly shawarmas and kababs, either served on pita or as part of a rice bowl. Halal carts broke into the NYC street scene in the 1980’s, when Greek carts were still a thing, but really blew up in the 1990’s. By the end of the millennium, there were over 500 halal carts in NYC, and their numbers have only grown since then.
Perhaps the most famous halal cart, and one of the first, is Halal Guys. Over the decades, they have not only expanded throughout the city but nationwide, operating both carts and brick and mortar restaurants. Like many of the current carts, it was operated by Egyptian immigrants. They are famous for their white and red sauces – the former apparently a mint yogurt sauce and the latter apparently shattah, a peppery sauce. -, something which other carts seem to have imitated. In addition to Egyptians, many halal carts are operated by Bangladeshi and Afghan immigrants/refugees, and the menus of their specific carts may reflect these interests.
Getting food from a halal cart was one of my “NYC must do’s” and we were lucky that one of the two halal carts located immediately across the street from our hotel – there were probably a dozen or so within a couple of blocks -, got very good reviews. Thus on our second night in the City, after attending a taping of the Colbert show, we got halal take out at Mama Halal Food and ate it in our hotel.
I went with the lamb gyro ($8.50) and I was very happy. The lamb cubes were impossible tender and flavorful, and after I removed some lettuce, the pita sandwich was well balanced. I had it just with the white sauce. The gyro was perhaps a tad small, but fortunately I wasn’t terribly hungry. I’d definitely order it again if I was in the area.
Mike had the chicken tikka masala bowl ($10.50), with both white and red sauces, and he was very happy with it. I, personally, didn’t think it tasted much like tikka masala, and the red sauce had made it too spicy for my taste, but I appreciated how tender the chicken was. He’d order it again, I wouldn’t.
Drinks were cheap, just $2 for cans, if I recall correctly. There was almost no wait on that cold February Monday night, and service was friendly and efficient. In addition to the W 51st location that we visited, Mama Halal Food has carts at W54st/8Ave, W50st/9Ave and 121st/LibertyAve (Queens).
Mama Halal Food W 51st St. & 7th Ave. NYC (347) 207-5804 M-Su 10 AM - 3 AM
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