A Bird in the Basket

It’s possible to expound with Talmudic subtlety on the nuances of a perfect dish of cholent, the exact species of marine life that might make their way into a proper bouillabaisse, the 23 ingredients indispensable to a Oaxacan mole negro or the range of permissible textures in a dish of Lebanese minced raw lamb. You may even know somebody who claims to know where to get the best duck-tongue noodle soup, where the Nigerian fufu is fluffiest, whose souffles rise the highest.

But everybody thinks they know where to get the best roast chicken in town. Some--those who commute to Zankou in Hollywood or to Zuni in San Francisco--are even right.

Brentwood Country Mart, at the nexis between Brentwood and good-neighborhood Santa Monica, is a sort of subcult Farmer’s Market, a sprawling courtyard mall patinated with the sort of homey rusticity that is best pulled off in an area with no actual farmers. There’s a pretty good bookstore shoehorned in toward the entrance, a tony baby-clothes store and a non-Starbucksian place to buy latte. The market itself is small but has a pretty good butcher and a stuck-in-the-country feel to it.

But to most people in the exalted reaches north of Montana, the Country Mart is synonymous with Reddi-Chick, whose roaring fire and golden-skinned roasting fowl exude an aroma almost powerful enough to smell at the beach. In the afternoons, the Country Mart is thronged with Reddi-Chick devotees, staking out places at the few outdoor tables, dashing into the market to stock up on Diet Dr Pepper, stuffing seasoned French fries into their Nivea’d maws by the handful.

The basic item of currency at Reddi-Chick is the chicken basket, half a roast chicken buried beneath a high mound of fries, and generations of Westside kids have learned how to customize their chicken basket with extra dollops of barbecue sauce, smears of sour cream, giant gobs of Dijon mustard.

If you’ve spent some time playing around with the menu at Reddi-Chick, you’ve probably wondered why you didn’t just stick with that chicken basket. The pork ribs, for instance, tend toward flabbiness and lack real smoke flavor; the fried seafood is leaden as a bad Letterman monologue. The syrupy teriyaki sauce might taste all right on pancakes but it does nothing for a chicken wing. Reddi-Chick has recently instituted a minor sideline in stuffed baked potatoes, and although the broccoli tuber and the chili-cheese spud are no worse than the version you might find in the food court of the Glendale Galleria, they are also not anything you’d want to be discovered actually eating in public.

But while Reddi-Chick’s staple product is probably not the best chicken you’ve ever had--the breast meat could be somewhat less dry; the seasoning could be a bit less generic; a little fresh garlic wouldn’t hurt--it’s real good. Westsiders like to compare the bird with the earthier, ultimately better chickens at Zankou, but a Reddi-Chick is more like the best version of the chickens that spin in supermarkets, marinated, mildly seasoned, but crisp, with a sort of caramelized thing happening around the joints that causes bits of skin to stick to your teeth, and a developed, mellow sweetness that will scent your hands for the rest of the day no matter how many Handi-Wipes you happen to use.

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WHERE TO GO

Reddi-Chick, in the Brentwood Country Mart, 225 26th St., Santa Monica, (310) 393-5238. Open daily, noon to 7 p.m. Cash only. Takeout. Parking lot. Lunch or dinner for two, food only, $9-$14.

WHAT TO GET:

Chicken basket.