Rooster & Rice is a Thai Hainanese Chicken Rice place that recently opened in the Soma Towers Food Court. It shares a kitchen with Xiao Chi Jie and Bento Bliss, operating in the front of the kitchen. Ordering is done via two kiosks to the left side of the order counter; the right three kiosks are for the other two businesses.
Given how new they are, the kitchen was fully staffed during our weekday lunch visit and they were cranking out dishes at a quick pace, even when freshly battering and frying the Hat Yai chicken to order.
The Original, Regular, Mixed ($16) - Rooster & Rice gives a pretty good sized portion of food for the money. Unfortunately it's not very good. The poached chicken, pleasantly arranged on top of a bed of rice, looks tender, juicy and flavorful, but the looks are most definitely deceiving. The chicken is unpleasantly dry, giving an disturbing mealy and stringy texture that lodges between the teeth. It sticks to the molars and makes an almost audible click when chewing. The skin, which should be gelatinous and silky, is rubbery and dry. It's honestly appalling, and is one of the worst renditions of this dish I've ever eaten.
The bed of rice underneath isn't great either. It's dry and firm, almost crunchy in some portions, and extremely salty. There's no glistening oil or chicken fat in this rice, making it very one dimensional. It has a decent chicken flavor, but combined with the saltiness of the ice, I feel like they use chicken bouillon rather than homemade chicken broth and fat to cook.
On the side, they include some sliced cucumbers that are fresh and crunchy, and a small cup of sauce that's salty, sweet, savory, and full of ginger essence. It's pretty much the only good part about this dish.
The dish also comes with a small cup of chicken broth. It's really salty, like the restaurant dumped an entire spoonful of chicken bouillon in the cup. This is probably what they use to cook the rice, which is why I also feel like it's full of powdered chicken bouillon. (1/5)
Hat Yai Fried Chicken ($15) - This dish is an improvement over the Khao Man Gai. The fried chicken has an excellent level of fry, with the fresh batter morphing into a marvelous range of crags and valleys that deliver a robustly thick crunch. The chicken thigh and leg aren't dried out too much, so they don't become tough and stringy. The chicken is salted appropriately, but the aromatics are weak. It definitely feels like they took some shortcuts in the flavor department. The chicken comes on top of the same dry rice as the other dish, cucumbers, and a cup of sweet Thai chili sauce. (3/5)
Rooster & Rice's claim to fame is their Khao Man Gai and unfortunately it was a disaster both in terms of the chicken and the rice. This is a really poor showing for their first foray into Washington.
Bathrooms - Larger ones up the stairs in the food court. read more