Try a famous Chinese chicken dish in a Las Vegas strip mall
The scene: Some of the best restaurants in Las Vegas, including many hidden gems, have long been in otherwise unattractive strip malls or offbeat locations off Las Vegas Boulevard. Recently this has become a bigger trend as Las Vegas continues to move towards a “strolling” model, aimed at getting visitors out of the mega casino resorts and onto the streets, with the recent additions of several major outdoor attractions and pedestrian promenades, most notably The LINQ and The Park. We’ve previously visited new eateries in both, Gordon Ramsay Fish & Chips and Beerhaus respectively.
Flock & Fowl is sort of a hybrid of the concepts, a newer spot using the older model — an offbeat location in a nondescript strip mall. It’s not far from the action, on West Sahara Ave., a block off the northern part of the Strip between the SLS and Stratosphere casinos, one strip mall down from that in which the famed Golden Steer, Las Vegas’ oldest steakhouse, resides. But you still need to plan to go here (or you would never find it) as it is both very good and very unique.
Because of its global clientele and employee base, Las Vegas is a culinary melting pot with a diverse food scene, and even in other large cities, you might be hard pressed to find a place specializing in Hainanese cuisine, that of China’s smallest province. Here it has been modernized in a hip way (think organic meat and staff t-shirts with clever sayings), and it doesn’t feel like a Chinese restaurant so much as a tiny café.
Flock & Fowl is a small storefront with a single dining room, just eight tables and often a wait, though many locals (most of the crowd) call in pick-up orders. Once you’ve secured a table, you go to a small counter in the back corner, order, pay, grab your drinks and wait for the food to be brought out. It’s a limited menu and the ordering and cooking process is very efficient, so tables turn fast, especially thanks to a rather unusual touch for Las Vegas — no alcoholic beverages are served. It’s only open for brunch/lunch, 10:30 a.m. to 3:30 p.m., Tuesday-Saturday.
Reason to visit: Hainan Chicken Rice, wings, bao (buns)
The food: Hainan Island sits off the south coast of China, and is often described as “China’s Hawaii,” because its beaches, tropical weather, golf courses and resorts attract lots of visitors from the much colder regions of China and Russia. Seafood is of course popular on the island and the cooking style in general is less spicy, lighter and uses less oil than better known regional Chinese cuisines found widely in America. However, the single most famous dish is not fish, it’s Hainan Chicken Rice, which has also become wildly popular and widely available in Thailand, Malaysia, Vietnam and especially Singapore, which has adopted it as its own.
What sets this dish apart is that the chicken is poached in simmering stock, then seasoned with spices, garlic and ginger, and used to cook the rice, giving it a rich, flavorful and chicken-imbued taste. The chicken is traditionally served with the rice and an array of dipping sauces.
There are only three options for entrée plates at Flock & Fowl ($10 each), all of which include a side of the special rice, house-made dipping sauces (ginger scallion, chili and soy), marinated cucumbers and mustard greens. The main event is No. 1, the poached Hainan chicken, which always sells out, so it’s better not to drop in for a late lunch hoping to try it. The restaurant uses Mary’s Organic Free Range chicken, a high-quality poultry raised in California by a 52-year-old, third-generation family owned specialty farm, which is increasingly the choice of demanding, high-end chefs. The chicken is excellent, a quarter of a large bird served boneless so it’s easy to dip and eat, amazingly juicy for something poached. All the sauces are very flavorful, but the excellent sambal-style chili sauce is quite hot, great for heat lovers but not for the faint of heart. The rice steals the show — moist, flavorful and richer than almost any rice you can imagine, so you can still enjoy Flock & Fowl’s specialty even if you don’t go with the traditional poached chicken.
It’s all about poultry here, and the other two main course options are buttermilk fried chicken tenders and roasted spring chicken. Both are standouts of their genres, with first-rate crispy breading on the tenders, but the roast chicken is even better, with perfect and delicious, very crispy skin and juicy meat underneath. You get more pieces of a smaller chicken with this one. Especially with the rice and sauce, you really can’t go wrong with any plate.
The appetizers are also poultry centric, and well worth checking out. Wings come two ways, available as four or eight pieces, or a mixed half and half eight piece: Sriracha butter glazed or Thai honey caramel with crispy garlic. While both are meaty and well cooked, and the latter are the more popular featured style, the former are better, perfectly spicy, just hot enough without overpowering the flavors. In general, this can be found through all the dishes at this humble establishment, where anything is towards the spicier side but not too hot, with very nuanced, layered flavors.
The final appetizer choice is another must-try, the Night Market Fried Chicken Bao, a piece of buttermilk fried chicken with Chinese five-spice powder in the mix, served on a steamed bun with kale and pea sprout slaw. These are sold individually or in pairs, and are delicious with a very crispy breading that adds a contrasting crunch to the soggy softness of the steamed bun. It's so good, it makes sense to skip the chicken tender main course if that’s the way you were leaning and have another main for variety, adding one or two of these. There is a salad and a couple of small sides, like an egg or link of Chinese sausage, but between the wings, the buns and the plates, the small menu packs a powerful punch that is sure to please.
Pilgrimage-worthy?: Yes for food lovers interested in expanding their worldview who have never tried the famous (in Southeast Asia) Hainan Chicken Rice, or for any visitor looking for a local, authentic break from the Strip casino resorts.
Rating: Yum-Plus! (Scale: Blah, OK, Mmmm, Yum!, OMG!)
Price: $ ($ cheap, $$ moderate, $$$ expensive)
Details: 380 West Sahara Ave., Las Vegas, NV; 626-616-6632; flockandfowl.com
Larry Olmsted has been writing about food and travel for more than 15 years. An avid eater and cook, he has attended cooking classes in Italy, judged a barbecue contest and once dined with Julia Child. Follow him on Twitter, @TravelFoodGuy, and if there's a unique American eatery you think he should visit, send him an e-mail at travel@usatoday.com. Some of the venues reviewed by this column provided complimentary services.
