There is little more comforting to eat than a perfectly juicy roast chicken, especially if someone has gone to the trouble of roasting it for you. With a good quality roasted chook the possibilities are endless: you can have a cosy dinner in front of the telly, chicken sandwiches, chicken salad, or even use the bones to make chicken soup. La Rotisserie in Sheung Wan has just arrived on the scene to facilitate this for us.
This tiny hole in the wall was set up by three French friends who missed the delicious rotisserie chickens they grew up eating. Thankfully the corn-fed chicken is shipped over from France too, so you know you’re getting delicious, free-range poultry that’s worth the slightly extra cost.
For takeaway only, La Rotisserie offers ¼ ($50), ½ ($90) or a whole chicken ($150) cooked to golden perfection in the shop’s giant rotisserie oven. There’s also the option of quiche, roast chicken sandwich, chicken Caesar salad, and a variety of sides that change daily.
The lunch set includes ¼ chicken, sides and either a soup or an iced tea for a mere $68, packaged and ready to take home, back to the office or, like we did, to a pretty little bench somewhere to have a picnic.
The homemade soup of the day was celery and tomato. Although this is not something I would normally order, it was absolutely delicious and so fresh that it seemed it had been made especially for us. My only complaint about the soup was the wooden spoon; I simply can’t stand the feeling of wood in my mouth, so I decided to drink it straight from the bowl instead!
I often find that the breast is the driest part of the bird, yet La Rotisserie’s chicken breast had not the slightest hint of dryness; it was wonderfully juicy and full of flavour, drizzled in a scrumptious, if slightly oily, jus. Side options included rice, roast potatoes and mixed vegetables, of which we chose the latter two. The potatoes were perfectly fluffy and deliciously infused with rosemary, while the vegetables were perhaps just a touch too al dente.
Since I must give my readers a rounded experience of each restaurant, I simply had to try one of the desserts, so we shared a chocolate cake with sel de guerande. I loved the chicken, but I absolutely adored this cake. The so-light-it-was-almost-mousse cake sat upon a perfectly crunchy layer of biscuit and was all sprinkled with coarse salt crystals, creating an incredible balance of salt and sweet that begged me to finish every last crumb. Needless to say if you’re sharing this cake, you might want to first clarify the boundaries of what is yours and what is sadly not yours.
La Rotisserie is the perfect answer to a lazy night in or a delicious (and somewhat nutritious) lunch. The concept is right, the prices are to be expected for Hong Kong, and frankly I don’t see anything stopping me from venturing into Sheung Wan at the very least once a week to get my juicy chicken fix.
La Rotisserie
255 Queen’s Road Central
Sheung Wan
Hong Kong
(Entrance on Hillier Street)
Tel: +852 2324 1898
(Lunch is first come first served, but you can order your chicken for the evening by calling a day in advance)
