A.

You want this crunch?

That's exactly what on a jacked I specialize, Is it?

Oh, relic.

It's good.

They're one of Ella'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 Chris Penis It has to be satisfying the crazy comfort of having salty chicken and shallot sticky rights.

Shall sticky rise a little sweet?

That's perfect.

Peasant food, right?

So a salty protein and then a very hardy starch.

The flavor of the chicken has to be juicy but not overly salty.

So we start with brining toe wet Brian And then we moved to doing a marinade after a stride.

Marinades like shallots and garlic.

It's got like a twang from the tumeric, and you can see that 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 like crisp 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 conduit, like either just salt or just fish sauce or fish sauce and garlic.

But you always see garlic and you see tumeric, 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, Typhoon, you could find raw blood salads.

You can find a 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 very curious Cook.

Dad was doing it like a couple weeks at a time on Monday.

That's are like family that waas our family test kitchen day.

Like a lot of us who don't live at home lately.

Justin Pichit Guangxi hasn't seen much of his parents.

He grew up in the restaurant they started before he was born, and he has since taken over as thes 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.

Look at that door.

This tragic in always remind me off my hometown.

Where I can come from is Nakorn, where it is famous.

For this there's different than the KFC or Pop or those because we have high earth in it.

Ricky he's the owner until he had a stroke, my father's in the hospital and it was my responsibility toe.

Come in and take over.

So I I just like, slipped into my father's shoes and it's hard shoes, you know.

It's tough.

It's a little tight shoe.

Actually, it Zina, while E always sold out before you have eaten.

All right.

After seeing this fried chicken, I am super excited to hear this.

That is the sound of crispy fried chicken.

You can really tell there is no part of this chicken unde battered equal opportunity batter.

Mm.

This alone is gold.

It's these crispy little edges on the outside.

It definitely has that salty umami.

And yet turmeric, e and herbal taste that you don't usually get with fried chicken, that crispy exterior.

And that's soft, juicy inside.

It's just the fried chicken alone is outstanding.

They could really hold its own without any condiments.

But this sauce, that right on top, well, 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 Jim Seafood.

It could be used on anything, even things that aren't seafood typically numb.

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 L.

A.

We're definitely part of the old guard.

I mean, the L.

A 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 path ties and Patsy's.

But there's all sorts of, like, now little diverse pockets of Thai restaurants that specialized 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, a little lamb, Jews and a little bit more his eagle eyes definitely watching.

He's very attuned to the sounds of the walk 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 is going well.

Sounds like you guys were 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 give me their feedback, whether I want it or not.

I check them so I don't tell.

That is for me.

I want to see how they serve the customer.

She's a secret trial.

I pretty tough on him because I want him to maintain how good our strong is e Tell him.

Okay.

My mom would kill me by how I'm eating all the chicken right now, because e all of the juiciest bites of every piece when you know, look at this E should be ashamed of myself.