Oakland's Thai chicken-rice classic comes through James Syhabout's Hawking Bird, the casual Temescal sibling to two-star Commis. Poached chicken on garlic rice.

Kao mun gai is Bangkok's hawker staple, a one-plate dish of poached chicken over garlic-and-ginger rice with chili-soybean sauce. James Syhabout, raised in his mother's Thai restaurant in San Leandro, brought the dish to Oakland in 2017 with Hawking Bird on Telegraph Avenue. The room runs the dish under fifteen dollars in keeping with its hawker origins.

Where to eat Kao mun gai in Oakland

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Make it at home

Serves 41 hrEasy

Ingredients

  • 1 whole chicken, 1.5kg
  • 300g jasmine rice
  • 6 garlic cloves, smashed
  • 20g ginger, sliced
  • 1 bunch cilantro stems
  • Salt
  • 2 tbsp soybean paste
  • 2 fresh red chilies, sliced
  • 1 tbsp ginger, grated
  • 3 tbsp light soy sauce
  • 1 tbsp rice vinegar
  • Cucumber slices and cilantro to serve

Method

  1. Poach the chicken in a stock pot with garlic, ginger, cilantro stems and salt for 40 minutes at a bare simmer. Lift out, rest 10 minutes.
  2. Rinse the rice and cook in 400ml of the chicken poaching broth with one smashed garlic clove and a knob of chicken fat.
  3. Mix soybean paste, chilies, ginger, soy sauce and rice vinegar for the sauce.
  4. Slice the chicken and lay over the rice with cucumber, cilantro and a generous spoon of sauce.

Editor tip. The rice should taste of chicken. Use the poaching broth and the rendered fat or it will read flat.