Chicken joint The Red Chickz has six locations in total – One in Texas and five in California, including the one right here in Culver City. It is, according to its online profile, “a Nashville hot chicken restaurant that serves up the crunchiest, most flavorful chicken in LA. The chicken is fresh, hand-breaded, and halal, and the restaurant has a casual and fun atmosphere. With a variety of menu options to choose from, The Red Chickz is the perfect place to enjoy a delicious and satisfying meal with family and friends.”
There’s no lie to be found there. We’ll get to the flavors soon, but the atmosphere genuinely is fun, while the options available on the menu are impressively varied. Meanwhile, the fact that the chicken is halal will appeal to many. There’s a lot of misinformation about halal meat out there, with rumors of cruelty intrinsically linked to ignorance.
In fact, halal simply means that the animal was slaughtered following Islamic law, a huge part of which being that it was killed humanely, with the blood then drained. We can only wish that a demand for humane killing is followed elsewhere.
Beyond that, it’s the seasoning at The Red Chickz that makes the fried chicken stand out. You can order your chicken Country Style (plain), Cool (no heat), Glow (mild), Spark (medium), Bonfire (hot), Blaze (x-hot), and Inferno (xx-hot). But regardless of your own tolerance for heat, the flavor is exceptional.
Their chicken tenders are incredible. They’re also enormous, so a chicken tender meal comes with just two. Believe us when we say that’s more than enough. The tenders, coated as they are in the delicious glow-level coating are juicy and as tender as the name suggests. Plump and bursting with flavor the chicken is gloriously crunchy on the outside, and beautifully flakey on the interior.
We had that meal with the equally massive potato wedges and a side of awesomely tart pickles. Better still, though, were the giant shrimp. Again, we chose them at glow level, so there was the perfect bite. And again, the coating was crunchy and just right.
But the actual shrimp are startlingly impressive. The large, plump seafood tastes like it was just plucked out of the sea before getting blessed with the Red Chickz crunchy coating and plunged into the fryer.
For the vegans, their cauliflower is good too. But then, everything tastes good in the hands of these experts.
The Red Chickz is located at 10100 Venice Blvd., Culver City 90232. Call 213-800-1835 or visit theredchickz.com.