Down in Birdland : Where Chicken Is King

Here in Rowland Heights, the newest and shiniest of the Southland’s Asian shopping districts, is the land of chicken, a vale of poultry in the sort of multi-ethnic mall where “multi-ethnic” refers to different parts of China, a mall where bird is king.

At one end of the mall, neon signs advertise kung pao chicken; nearby is the Taiwanese-style Chicken Garden. Down past the chicken-serving Good Time Cafe and next to an outpost of the splendid Hong Kong-style Luk Yue barbecue chain--which has barbecued birds in the window . . . well, ok, they’re ducks--is the Malaysian-Chinese restaurant Hainan Chicken. The fine Hong Kong Supermarket, which anchors the mall, sells plump, tasty roasting chickens of enormous size, as well as black chickens, “old” chickens and chicken feet.

Hainan Chicken is an informal spot, busy, cheery, brightly lit, functioning basically as a fast-food place that serves honest Malaysian-Chinese cuisine. The place is well known for its noodles--especially the wat tan hor , a fried white-noodle dish that comes to the table looking like a goopy disaster but in fact tastes pretty good. Almost everybody, though, treats Hainan Chicken as a one-dish restaurant, the one dish, of course, being Hainanese chicken rice. The rice, which is cooked in chicken stock, is glossy, each grain separate, with a definite ginger tang and a nice oily feel. The rice is topped with chicken, either steamed (better flavor) or fried crisp (more fun to eat), and served with a couple of dips: ginger oil and spicy chile.

Chicken Garden is a nearly elegant bare-bones sort of place with soft lights and framed calligraphy. Everybody seems to be nibbling off-the-menu Taiwanese hors d’oeuvres, things like smoked beef, or small fried fish with chewy tofu leather, or fried pork chops with a pepper-salt dip.

The “house special” tofu may be the home-style bean curd of your dreams, small cubes sauteed until slightly crunchy on the outside but still creamy within, in a light, sharp sauce fragrant with soy and garlic, the kind of tofu you are often served in Chinese homes but rarely in restaurants. There is a dish of eggs scrambled with shrimp, the crustaceans barely jelled from the heat of the cooking, and also a dish that involves the tiniest deep-fried fish imaginable--they resemble wisps of rice stick noodles more than anything else--tossed with scallions, chile and fried peanuts.

But mostly, Chicken Garden is the place to go for chicken: pungent smoked chicken with a skin brittle as spun sugar; cool, brined “salted” chicken served with an intense ginger-oil dip; chicken stir-fried with pickled cabbage. The most popular dish seems to be “three-cup” chicken--a famous Taiwanese dish made by cooking the bird with a glass of soy sauce, a glass of oil and a glass of wine--and the chicken is superb, served crackling in an earthen pot, powerfully flavored with ginger and what must be an entire head of garlic, slightly sweet and impossible to stop eating until each little nub of chicken has been gnawed to the bone.

Chicken with black dates, one of the best things here, involves a chafing dish full of boiling broth that has the intriguing, peaty aroma of good single-malt Scotch whiskey and a haunting, complex sweet-smoky taste you might associate with top-notch artisanal bacon. The chicken itself seems to have given its all to the broth--the little pieces are tough and overcooked--but the black-date/chicken flavor of the soup is so nice it’s hard to imagine that you’d care.

And then there was the phenomenon called the “burning wine chicken,” at $19.55 by far the most expensive item on the menu. A waitress brought out a chafing dish filled with strongly scented soup, then set the burner ablaze and walked away until the broth bubbled merrily. She returned with a book of matches, one of which she lit and then held over the soup. There was a small puff of blue, then nothing. She shrugged and went back to the kitchen. In a minute, when the soup was boiling harder, she came back and tried another match. This time the soup exploded into a pillar of vibrant flame that rose a good foot and a half above the surface of the liquid and spattered the table around the pot with small droplets of broth. It looked like something volcanic from a National Geographic special.

We expected the spectacle to last at best a few seconds, but two minutes, three minutes, five minutes later, the soup was still ablaze, and we shrank back against the wall, away from its terrible heat, until the flames finally died down. By then, the soup had a weirdly medicinal taste and a reek like the aftermath of the Fourth of July. When that guy in “Apocalypse Now” talked about loving the smell of napalm in the morning, burning wine chicken was probably the breakfast he had in mind.

“I was surprised that you ordered that dish,” the waitress said as we settled the bill. “It’s not really to the Western taste.”

Chicken Garden: 18406 Colima Road, Rowland Heights, (818) 913-0548. Open Friday through Wednesday 10 a.m. to 10 p.m. No alcohol. Cash only. Take-out. Lunch or dinner for two, food only, $10-$20.

Hainan Chicken: 18406 Colima Road, Rowland Heights, (818) 854-0385. Open Tuesday through Thursday 11 a.m. to 9 p.m., Friday through Sunday 11 a.m. to 9:30 p.m. No alcohol. Cash only. Take-out. Lunch or dinner for two, food only, $9 to $14.