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Cantonese Crispy Fried Chicken (炸�雞)


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Don encouraged me to start a "mini-blog" about the search for my favorite chicken dish 炸å­é›ž.  It generally translates to crispy fried chicken but literally means "fried young chicken." It looks like this.  

 

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This is a popular dish in NY Chinatown but hard to find here.  Years ago, my mother wrote down the Chinese characters so I could show it to the waiter because on menus it can be called many things in English. Also, different waiters speak different dialects so verbalizing it in my own dialect could get me nowhere.  A couple of years ago, I flashed the characters asked at Full Kee.  At that time, they said they could make it if I ordered it a day in advance. This is not surprising in a non-Chinatown restaurant because the prep is not trivial. Check out this video.  Now I understand how the meat can be juicy and succulent yet sport a delicious crispy skin.

 


 

My quest is to find and try out this dish in NoVa.  Candidates to explore so far include China Wok, Lotus Garden, Mark's Duck House, XO Taste as well as what will be my starting point, Full Kee. I will keep you posted on my 炸å­é›ž experiences.

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It does look like it might exist in Gaithersburg at New Fortune. I searched Google for "炸å­é›ž" and it came up with some ads (example pdf). In them, New Fortune has "炸å­é¸¡" in its ad (8th down, first column of black text on the left). As Wikipedia says, it looks like the Simplified Chinese version of the dish.

Also, if you need a second-opinion taste tester in NoVA, let me know. I'm always up for Full Kee.  :D

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Incidentally, this is not to be confused with 炸å­é¸¡. :lol:

Ha! You can see how long I've been working on this. Obviously I work pretty slow.

The southern China answer to Peking duck?

Funny you should mention that. I'm also a big fan of Peking duck. Last October I went to China on a special group tour to visit my parents' villages (Taishan is not a big tourist mecca). I researched all the Peking duck places in Beijing where we would be headed afterwards. Every day in southern China, we had delicious chicken, duck, or goose...to the point where when the tour ended and my sibs and I went on to Beijing, I was sick of poultry so I never had the authentic Peking duck. Oh well, next time!

It does look like it might exist in Gaithersburg at New Fortune. I searched Google for "炸å­é›ž" and it came up with some ads (example pdf). In them, New Fortune has "炸å­é¸¡" in its ad (8th down, first column of black text on the left). As Wikipedia says, it looks like the Simplified Chinese version of the dish.

Also, if you need a second-opinion taste tester in NoVA, let me know. I'm always up for Full Kee. :D

Cool! I'm going to limit myself to NoVa for now, but if I don't get satisfaction, on to DC and MD!

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My first stop will be China Garden in Rosslyn.  Why?  Because it is not far from my house and it has it on the menu:  é‡‘牌炸å­é›ž  Golden Roast Chicken - Cantonese Style.  The first 2 characters mean gold medal or something like that, says my Taiwanese friend.  

 

After my Wiseguy pizza lunch today, I walked over to confirm that they had it, flashing the characters with my Blackberry.  Yes, every day, the man said.  On their website, they have a variety of banquet set menus and on several of them was the Golden Roast Chicken.  That gave me confidence that they made it often and knew what they were doing, as opposed to a few years ago when Full Kee told me they needed a day's notice to make it (although I understand that it is on their regular menu now).  It also gave me hope that it would be fresh, as opposed to the time at Fortune Seafood where it was on their dimsum menu and it tasted days old.  I complained and the manager gave me a bunch of shrimp dumplings (har gow è¦é¤ƒ) to make me go away.

 

I hope to hit China Garden this weekend.  BTW, if you are in NY Chinatown, Amazing 66 has damn good ç‚¸å­é›ž.

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In a nutshell, our meal at China Garden was terrible.  Maybe we ordered too American because there were plenty of Chinese people there and a huge banquet going on, so maybe they are ordering something better.

 
We got shrimp toast - we got spoiled with the shrimp toast at the long-gone Ruby Restaurant in DC Chinatown.  My husband said this was the worst shrimp toast he has ever had.  It is as if they had made it during the week and re-fried it to serve to us.  Hey, it doesn't work.
 
We got pan-fried meat dumplings.  Horrible.  The meat tasted very old and it seemed to have been pan-fried in rancid oil.  We left a few and I didn't bother to take it home.
 
The chicken (炸å­é›ž) was okay, nothing to write home about.  The meat was dry-ish but the skin was tasty.  It came with shrimp chips and they were the worst shrimp chips I have ever eaten - sort of like eating styrofoam peanuts.  The picture shows the dish after a few pieces were eaten - forgot to take the picture when dish first arrived.
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My husband ordered triple delight and he said it was blah.
 
The one highlight of the meal was the banana fritter that came with our check and the obligatory fortune cookies.  The fritters were fantastic - but not good enough for me to ever return to China Garden.
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In a nutshell, our meal at China Garden was terrible.  Maybe we ordered too American because there were plenty of Chinese people there and a huge banquet going on, so maybe they are ordering something better.

I have never understood the buses of Chinese tourists going to China Garden - it's always been terrible.

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In a nutshell, our meal at China Garden was terrible.  Maybe we ordered too American because there were plenty of Chinese people there and a huge banquet going on, so maybe they are ordering something better.[/size]

Sorry you had a bad experience.  When I went for the holiday banquette, it was quite good, from top to bottom:  food, service, company.  It might help that the host spared no expense, but regardless, everyone left happy and with a full stomach.

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