Shout out to Michael Nagrant for putting this place back on my radar (highly recommend subbing to his substack The Hunger).
Let’s get the obvious out of the way—everyone knows about Noodlebird’s checkered past with Fat Rice so I wanted to verify two things before eating there:
1.) Is the Fat Rice chef still there? According to Nagrant and a few redditors who work there the answer is no. I don’t agree with all the things he got cancelled for but definitely don’t want to support a guy who’s being extremely shitty to his staff to put it lightly
2.) How is the staff treated now? I know the ex-Fat Rice GM is running things now. I don’t really care for her hiring a “personal development coach” to change things but just wanted to know how employees are finding it. Reached out to someone who works there and he said the following:
“I've been here over a year and it's easily the best restaurant job l've had in the last 5 years since moving herr.
Consistent schedule, benefits, decent pay with raises possible, good people
All the stuff that happened at fat rice was well before I worked there but it doesn't exist anymore”.
Sounds good to me. Okay with that out of the way, here’s what I thought about the food.
On the savory side, the charcoal chicken is juicy and seasoned exceptionally. It’s very well-balanced between being smoky, salty, sweet and spicy. The coconut rice adds a pleasant fragrance to go along with it. Decent portion (half chicken) for $20.
The Lo Mai Gai was great and is very similar to a Zongzi for all my Taiwanese brothas. It’s essentially sticky rice with a filling of braised chicken, shiitake mushrooms, peanuts. Super nostalgic in the best possible way.
The XO noodles with shrimp and char siu was good but I wouldn’t get it again especially for $25. It hits all the Hong Kong style noodle notes but I’d get the char siu over rice next time.
The best part of the meal were the pastries. This could be the most slept on bakery in Chicago. The ceylon snickerdoodle is a snickerdoodle on steroids because it’s filled with the salted egg yolk custard you’d get at (a top 3 dim sum item no debate). It’s almost levain-sized but is a perfect combo of sweet and salty with a perfect chewy texture. Equally as good is the crème brûlée vanilla cream Malasada (essentially a donut). The crème brûlée is crunchy on top of a pillowy pastry filled with vanilla cream. These are just two 10/10s that we got out of a whole menu of insanely good sounding pastries. Definitely running it back for the black sesame oatmeal cookie and the banana caramel brownie amongst others. Can’t believe no one is talking about the pastry program or the chef who runs it.
Anyway TLDR; the shittiness of Fat Rice seems to be gone, the savory food is great and the pastries are top tier in the city. Shout out Michael Nagrant for putting me on
by johnluuu