Zankou Chicken

get drunk while doing it. 10. Zankou Chicken At this lone OC outlet of the Zankou chain, you see the twirling birds constantly being basted by the dripping juices of those that rotate above it. And since turnover at Zankou is as continual as train

depot, the chicken is always hot, always fresh. The skin, of course, is the best part — so well-rendered, it flakes off by itself in crispy sheets, as if it were trying to shed. The flavor of the skin is of chicken concentrated, but you taste the

For those whose only exposure to Armenian culture is Zankou Chicken (actually, not a bad start), here's a chance to widen your perspective. This weekend (Saturday, September 13th from 12 PM-10 PM, and Sunday, September 14th from 12 PM – 8 PM), the

dancing, and of course, food! What kind of grub can you expect? Shish kebabs. Soujoukh Sandwiches. Armenian pizza. Sourj coffee. Armenian pastries and baklava. No word if they will have that magical garlic paste that Zankou makes..

Disneyland. Zankou Chicken is down the street, there's an old-school A-framed Wienerschnitzel within spitting distance, and the cluster of mini-mall businesses it neighbors includes a liquor store and an auto-repair shop with signs painted in block letters so

ketchup-like pure smeared under the fried soft-shell prawns. Is Whitener averse to trends? Probably not. The bony, chewy hamachi collar is caked in the ruddy spice mixture you may recognize from Howlin’ Ray’s hot chicken, and you have seen the combination

of soft sweetbreads and crunchy whole mustard seeds before. The nicely fried boneless trout nestles into a mound of hummus whose flavor recalls a side dish at Zankou. If you are looking for avocado salad, steak tartare, pork belly, Nobu-style sashimi

everything, but you should especially use it on the chicken, a rotisserie bird not unlike the ones at Zankou. If you have at least three other people with you, you want the whole hen: served in two halves, ready to be drawn and quartered with a bronzed skin

so well-rendered that it breaks off in literal shards. The meat is juicy where it isn't crispy, and when you dab a little of that chile paste, you forget all about that much-lauded garlic sauce Zankou serves with its fowl. When you overdo it with the

, served on a bed of pillowy white beans. The rotisserie chicken comes across as a luscious North African take on Zankou, skin gooey and sticky, meat properly overdone; the squid bodies stuffed with a forcemeat of their own spiced tentacles are clever and

incongruously Indian-seeming dish of spinach spiked with crunchy chickpeas and served with puffs of spiced bhatura bread. Oddly, the morunos themselves, both chicken and lamb, may be the least of the offerings here, OK tucked into a sandwich with mint and onion

. The most popular meat to be planed off the pirouetting protein cylinders, millimeter-by-millimeter, is the chicken. They'll pile it up in snowy mountains, serve it with pita bread and, most importantly, a potent garlic toum to slather all over–it's one

of the best garlic pastes in the county, which is just as good, if not better, than Zankou's. And then there's the veggie plate, which is what you should order if you're a first timer. For a little less than $10, you can choose any five items from a

advertising a lunch special that played fast and loose on what they actually served. “Chicken Soup with Pasta for $7.95,” it said. Pasta? Chicken Soup? Surely they're not serving anything remotely Italian or Campbell's-inspired. ] Just to be sure, I took this

opportunity to revisit the restaurant, whose Anaheim branch I reviewed not long ago. And of course, I was right. The Chicken Soup and Pasta they advertised was, indeed, just a bowl of their signature kal guk su, the first item they list on a menu identical to

, accompanied by a house skordalia garlic sauce, a paste akin to Zankou's signature spread but much sweeter and tamer. The shrimp, as with all other dishes at Orea, are served meze-style, offered on plates the size of cereal bowls and meant for sharing—and much

, filled with shaved petals of gyro or spears of the wonderful grilled chicken, a meat so yielding it disintegrates the moment it touches your lips. But eating it after you've just witnessed the theater of the saganaki seems as counterintuitive as settling

smokiness is going to stick with you—on your clothes, in your hair—but you don’t mind. If it does this to you, think of what it’s doing to the chicken you are about to eat! In front of this primitive, smoldering heat source, whole birds spin—or tumble

scorching. Your face will redden, and your brow will dampen. But against the throbbing pain, you trudge on because you won’t encounter a more perfect condiment to a rotisserie bird short of Zankou’s garlic paste. Even if you’re familiar with Peruvian food