Tired of the same old? Try chicken

Chicken, the predictable mainstay of menus, is going exotic at some restaurants around town. What would you say to a dinner of Asian silky white chicken?

“It’s got snow-white feathers and black skin and black meat. Very black,” says Bruce Marder, chef-owner of Capo in Santa Monica, where the silky chicken is offered as an occasional $40 special entree.

It has caused something of a stir inside and outside the kitchen. “Most of the people, when they see the breast skin, it’s scary,” Capo chef Ricky Marino says. “When I saw it, I said, ‘What is this? Is it bad or something?’ ”

The purplish-black color, about the shade of an eggplant, remains distinct once cooked.

The birds themselves have fluffy white feathers and look almost furry. Marder buys the unusual chicken breed from a Pennsylvania farm.

Spelled “silky” on the menu, the chicken is known by the proper name of Silkie bantam. It originates from China.

Meanwhile, Melisse in Santa Monica and Sona in West Hollywood both offer Jidori chicken, a particularly meaty type of grain-fed chicken that has chefs rhapsodizing about its virtues.

“There’s a translucence to it,” said Sona sous chef Michael David as he presented an uncooked chicken breast marinating in buttermilk.

“There is a slight pink hue, and when you cook it, it’s still light rosy and creamy.”

The final $25 dish is moist and slightly tangy and served with side dishes, such as braised collard greens, that often accompany pork.

At Melisse, chef Josiah Citrin has roasted Jidori chicken on his special prix fixe Valentine’s Day menu and the daily menu for $30.

“It’s basically a free-range chicken,” Citrin said. “What Jidori means actually, is ‘wild chicken’ or ‘chicken of the earth’ in Japanese.”

The corn-fed, cage-free chickens are raised in the San Joaquin Valley and sold in Los Angeles by East Olympic Poultry.

Chefs often compare the Jidori to a French chicken that isn’t imported into the United States, the poulet de Bresse. The blue-legged, red-crowned, free-range chicken is the only bird with its own appellation d’origine controlee (AOC) designation.