Crunchy, Juicy Thai Fried Chicken Is Made By This Family-Owned Restaurant - Fam To Table

This southern Thai-style fried chicken is crispy, flavorful, and maybe the most delicious in LA. You want this crunch. That's exactly what Anajak Thai specializes in. They're one of LA's original Thai spots. Been around for about 40 years. The family still runs it. We're gonna meet them and get a sense of how good their southern Thai-style fried chicken really is. Southern Thai fried chicken style is saltiness, crispiness. It has to be satisfying. The crazy comfort of having salty chicken and shallot sticky rice. Shallot sticky rice is a little sweet. That's perfect peasant food, right? A salty protein and then a very hearty starch. The flavor of the chicken has to be juicy but not overly salty. So we start with brining. It's a wet brine and then we move to doing a marinade after it's dried. The marinade is like shallots and garlic. It's got like a twang from the turmeric and you can see that it really gets in there. And it's got that kind of heat from the white pepper. And the batter has some lime paste in it just to get that super crisp. And you can see that like when the skin like crisps up it creates that crazy rigid structure. The marinade on the chicken has all the shallots and stuff clinging onto it. So as we're dipping it that ends up in the batter and it's flavoring the batter as it goes. There's all sorts of marinades that are done in the con with like either just salt or just fish sauce or fish sauce and garlic. But you always see garlic and you see turmeric. And there's a heavy salt component with a super crispy orange golden type of skin. The reason why Thai food is special is because it's the combination of comfort and adventure. It straddles that line between all those beautiful staples of our cuisine and things that are wild. I mean Thai food you could find raw blood salads. You can find fried rice roaches. I remember in the past dad said that he had done like at least a dozen different batters and marinades. He's a very curious cook. Dad was doing it like a couple weeks at a time on Monday. That's our like family, that was our family test kitchen day. Like a lot of us who don't live at home, lately Justin Phichit Boongsee hasn't seen much of his parents. He grew up in the restaurant they started before he was born and he's since taken over as the second generation chef owner. Today his mom and dad have taken a break from quarantine to visit him. And like any good son he's making sure they eat. This fried chicken always remind me of my hometown. Where I come from is Nakhon where it is famous for this. Taste different than the KFC or Popeye or those because we have Thai herbs in it. Ricky he's the owner until he had a stroke. My father's in the hospital and it was my responsibility to come in and take over. So I just like slipped into my father's shoes and it's hard shoes you know. It's tough it's a slight it's a little tight the shoe. Actually it's it's been a while since I've had it. It's always sold out before you can eat. All right after seeing this fried chicken I am super excited. You hear this? That is the sound of crispy fried chicken. You can really tell there is no part of this chicken unbattered. Equal opportunity batter. This alone is gold it's these crispy little edges on the outside. It definitely has that salty umami and yet turmeric-y and herbal taste that you don't usually get with fried chicken. That crispy exterior and that soft juicy inside it's just the fried chicken alone is outstanding. It can really hold its own without any condiments. But this sauce putting that right on top oh that just really brings it to life. I mean it's really bright it's sour it's spicy. I really like spicy. It's called nam jim seafood. It can be used on anything even things that aren't seafood. Typically nam jim seafood's a little bit on the green side but ours is like bright red because we're using red chilies right now. And I think it goes like get that heat. At first you may be like no I'm not a sweet sauce kind of guy. You'll eventually everyone moves to the sweet sauce. No one is higher than the sweet sauce. No one. In the landscape of Thai restaurants in LA we're definitely part of the old guard. I mean the LA Thai restaurant it's like the it's like the neighborhood Thai restaurant. The neighborhood Thai restaurant that has all of the things the stoplight curries the pad thai's and pad see's. But there's all sorts of like now little diverse pockets of Thai restaurants that specialize in different corners of Thailand. Even though Justin's perfected his fried chicken he still considers his father to be the expert in the family. Put a little bit lime juice and fish sauce a little bit more. His eagle eyes definitely watching. He's very attuned to the sounds of the wok even. It was the first time he dined here after his stroke and he turns to me and he says from the way that I'm hearing everything it sounds like everything's going well. Sounds like you guys are working together well just based on how it sounds. Right now they're the at-home off-site managing partners. Yeah no I'm always open to their feedback you know. I mean they they give me their feedback whether I want it or not. I check them so I don't tell that it's for me. I want to see how they serve the customer. She's a secret shopper. I pretty tough on him because I want him to maintain how good our restaurant is. I eat and I tell him. My mom would kill me by how I'm eating all the chicken right now because. You ate all the skin. I ate all of the juiciest bites of every piece. When I you know look at this. But he's got nothing. I should be ashamed of myself.