ZhenDing Chicken 振鼎鸡

A popular chain restaurant in Shanghai, always full of people. I was determined to find out how good it was and went one afternoon about a year ago. Since then I'd say I go back once every 2 weeks? The place serves chicken and noodles and nothing else. There are cheap bottle pop and beer available too (a bottle of 7-up at RMB1.9!!!).

This is a typical ZhenDing Chicken:

Chicken is sold by weight - RMB43.60 per kg to be precise. Once you find yourself a seat (you might have to share a table with strangers in rush hour), the server will come and take your order. You can specify which part of the chicken you want. In my case I usually order RMB20 to RMB30 worth of chicken breasts. And this was my dinner - RMB 26.3 worth of breast meat:

There were at least 5 breasts, of typical Chinese farm chicken = small. I think I must be the only person who order breast meat, as the local people usually prefer wings and other bony bits - apparently they have more flavours.

The dipping sauce and the chili sauce are the main reason this chain has become popular. Apparently there is some kind of secret recipe involved. The brown sauce is like a sweet soya with ginger and a little garlic I believe. The chili sauce is not too spicy but does have a kick to it. This is how the locals do it: mix chili sauce into the brown one, and dung the coriander from top of chicken into the mixture.

Then you can start peeling the chicken and soak it in!

They serve 2 types of noodles: one in soup and the other dry with soya. I have to say I prefer the soupy one as I find the dry one way too salty.It comes with giblets unfortunately but you can easily pick them out. At RMB3.6 (20p!!) a bowl you can't really complain.My dinner came to just under 30RMB. Two quid! Not bad eh.

Service: mostly efficient. It's not uncommon to see waitress and customer get into a shouting match. A true local experience. Go at non-rush hour to avoid sharing your table.