Restaurant: Side Chick
Location: 400 S Baldwin Ave, Arcadia, CA 91007. (626) 688-3879
Date: November 04, 2017
Cuisine: Hainan Chicken
Rating: Very succulent
Occasionally those of us Hedonists who are really serious about our Chinese food do a food crawl of some sort. Today’s was 5 stops, all for Hainan Chicken Rice. This is a traditional dish of Hainan Provence in southern China and is one of the national dishes of Singapore. Poached at low temp with garlic and ginger. The broth is supposed to be used to cook the rice. It is served with a variety of sauces.
This is part 1. The full set is: [Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5]
I’ve been to the Santa Anita Westfield mall (on Baldwin) a couple times for Hai Di Lao, but didn’t notice the little food court area. This mall is incredibly Asian oriented (haha).
Googling Side Chick’s name taught me a new slang word, Side Chick, meaning the girlfriend on the side. Lol. But it’s also this kiosk restaurant.
They pretty much only have Hainan Chicken.
As you can see on the short menu.
Hainan Chicken. Side Chick uses mostly (all?) breast meat. The meat was the most tender, moist, and chickeny of all the places we went. I liked the rice too. There was soy sauce, spicy sauce, ginger sauce, and…
Chicken jus. Which made it even more moist. A whole lotta chicken flavor.
Boba tea from next door.
Side Chick is a one trick pony, and it’s in the mall which means the parking is spectacularly annoying. That being said, if you want a mild, moist, but very flavorful Hainan Chicken, it’s a good spot. Probably actually my favorite of the Hainan Chickens per se.