LA's Crispiest Thai Fried Chicken Is Made By This Family-Owned Restaurant

• In 1981, Chef Ricky and his wife opened The Valley's first Thai restaurant, introducing Los Angelenos to their beloved pad thai and green curry.

• A specialty dish from the Nakhon region in Southern Thailand has gotten the menu's top marks, and that's simply their crunchy, juicy Thai-style fried chicken.

• Sprinkled with shallots and served alongside sticky rice and sweet, spicy chili sauces, Anajak's piping-hot crispy-skinned chicken brings us in for a closer look at what makes this dish such a fan favorite.

Following is a transcript of the video.

Crystal Lee: This Southern Thai-style fried chicken is crispy, flavorful, and maybe the most delicious in LA.

[crunching] You want this crunch. That's exactly what Anajak Thai specializes in. [crunching]
Rattikorn Pichetrungsi: I love it! It's good.
Crystal: 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.

Justin Pichetrungsi: 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? So 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 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 could see that, like, when the skin 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 Nakhon with 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. [crunching]

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.

Crystal: Like a lot of us who don't live at home, lately, Justin Pichetrungsi 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. [crunching]

Rattikorn: This fried chicken always remind me of my hometown. Where I come from is Nakhon, where it is famous for this. They're 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.
Justin: My father was 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 been a while since I've had....
Rattikorn: We always sold out before he could eat.

Crystal: All right, after seeing this fried chicken, I am super excited. You hear this? [tapping] That is the sound of crispy fried chicken. You can really tell there is no part of this chicken unbattered. Equal opportunity batter. [crunching] Mm. This alone is gold. It's these crispy little edges on the outside. [crunching] 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 is just, mm! 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.

Justin: 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, 'cause we're using red chilies right now. And I think it goes like...get that heat. At first you may be like, "Nah, 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. [laughs] 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 neighborhood Thai restaurant. The neighborhood Thai restaurant that has all of the things. The stoplight curries, the pad thais and pad see ews. But there's all sorts of, like, now little diverse pockets of Thai restaurants that specialize in different corners of Thailand.

Crystal: Even though Justin's perfected his fried chicken, he still considers his father to be the expert in the family.
Ricky Pichetrungsi: Put a little bit of lime juice, and fish sauce, a little bit more.
Justin: His eagle eye's 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. [laughs] Yeah, no, I'm always open to their feedback, you know? I mean, they give me their feedback, whether I want it or not.
Rattikorn: I check them. So I don't tell that it's for me. I want to see how they serve the customer.
Justin: She's a secret shopper.
Rattikorn: I'm really tough on him, because I want him to maintain how good our restaurant is. I eat it, and I tell him.

Crystal: My mom would kill me by how I'm eating all the chicken right now, because —
Justin: You ate all the skin!
Crystal: I ate all of the juiciest bites of every piece. When I, you know, look at this! I should be ashamed of myself.