Best Chicken I've Ever Had - Chicken Village (Ji Cun) Panyu

Ji Cun's signature "crystal chicken"

I'd been here once before, two years ago, and in my mind, no chicken has topped this. Seriously, sometimes I wake up at night thinking about Ji Cun's "crystal chicken".

Guangzhou & Panyu Part II

nb. reposted from old blog, visited in May 2008

I was going to go to the deservedly famous Ngan Gei in Guangzhou the second morning, but alas, we were staying too far out to warrant the drive for me alone, so I settled for hotel brekkie, which was very surprisingly ok - they actually made decent 'western' breads like brioche and wholeweat loaves, unlike the usual yellowy, sweet, custard-powder-contaminated affair you get in China.

Lunch was at a place called Ji Cun (literally Chicken Village) in Panyu. One comment: The best chicken I've had in a long, long time. Their 'crystal steamed chicken', which is just, well, steamed chicken, was excellent - incredibly tasty and juicy. The bird is tiny compared to the frozen/chilled (whatever, they are both evil on the poultry-lover's scale) variety we get in HK, or heaven forbid Australia (ever tried chicken that tastes like water? Go to Australia...). Though to Oz's credit, this kind of chicken isn't exactly fleshy - Cantonese people in general like bones, we think it gives the flesh more flavour (prob due to proximity to marrow, or just for want of texture...)

Another highlight was the panfried stuffed beancurd - they make the beancurd on site, and while it wasn't the silkiest, it had the richness of freshly ground soybeans.

beancurd stuffed with fish paste; stir-fried congealed pig's blood; roasted fish fillets; the bowl in which the signature steamed chicken was in; excellent pork belly in bean paste (Chinese miso) topped with large shards of pickled ginger; pork bone and turnip soup; fish steamed with chicken; entrance to Ji Cun

Ji Cun 鸡村
550-575 Ying Bin Lu
Panyu City
Guangzhou
China
广东省广州市番禺区市桥迎宾路550号至575号
+86 02084661010

Guangzhou & Panyu Part I

nb. reposted from old blog, visited in May 2008

Tagged along with my parents to China for their property trawl and found that I can't even afford to buy a decent apartment in China these days. *sigh*

I did, however, come by some good Chinese food...

Our first meal was at the Grand Hyatt at Songshan Lake, which was by far the most expensive and almost predictably, the least spectacular... The dim sum menu was teeny - I ordered a char siu so (BBQ pork pastries) and it came out like freezer puff pastry hastily folded around a miniscule bit of badly made pork. The other dishes were decent though, like the thinly-sliced poached pork with minced garlic (suan ni bai rou). Still, it was grossly overpriced for mainland standards. Didn't help that the staff kept breaking plates right behind us and that our private washroom (we were in a private dining room) was finished with extremely sub-par fittings.

That afternoon we got to our hotel in Panyu, which is twenty minutes away from Tianhe district in Guangzhou, and proceeded to have dinner at Shichu (Private Kitchen/Chef), the 'premium' outlet of Guangzhou fave Bing Sheng. The only difference between the two, imo, was that Shichu is made up of a series of private rooms, while in Bing Shengyou sit in a conventional restaurant dining room. Bing Sheng junior is fairly decent decor-wise, and considering that the food wasn't much different, I'd probably just go to Bing Sheng next time. The champion of this meal was the braised duck with taro. Actually, it was the taro that really shone. It was steamed and cut into large chunks, but otherwise appeared to have undergone no further manipulation. The texture of the tuber itself was what won our hearts. In Cantonese cuisine we always look for 'fun' (powdery) taro - which means it's neither waxy nor mushy - it can be broken into clean cut pieces, but retains quite a bit of moisture, resulting in a 'powdery' texture. It's not so much a matter of season, but the way in which it was grown, and it takes a skilled chef or housewife to pick a good one. So anyway, this taro was exactly that, thus the evening was mostly spent with me hogging the taro and smothering it in the remainder of the duck's thickened dark soy sauce. The other standout dish was the slow cooked pig's trotter with sweet potatoes. Again, it was the starch component that won me over - soft, sweet and full of meaty flavours as a result of its duration in the claypot.

After dinner we went looking for dessert and ended up at another Guangzhou stalwart, Kai Ji (or Hoi Gei in Cantonese). They're famous for Canto sweet soups, but I didn't find them that interesting...

Anyway, yum yum yum. Day Two to come...

Shichu (by Bing Sheng)
178 Tianhe Dong Lu
+86 20 8757 5699

Kai Ji
889 Longjin Dong Lu