Yang’s Braised Chicken Rice has finally opened on Market Street in Nottingham located upstairs from Hu Lau Shan.

Many of us have been waiting for this moment ever since the sign was first placed on the building more than a year ago.

At last this week the lights came on and they were open for business

Yang’s Braised Chicken Rice is a franchise established in 2011 by Xiao Lu Yang that has since opened in over 6000 locations across the world (apparently) mostly in China but also in Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand, Japan, and Australia, and the States.

Perhaps having one pop up in Nottingham is perhaps less novel than I thought when I first started looking the name up 🙂

Anyway whatever I am delighted to find them open and even more so to finally get my chopsticks on their signature dish Huang Men Ji’s braised chicken and rice

As the name of the place suggests, and as I noted above this restaurant specializes in one dish ‘Yang’s Braised Chicken Rice’ although when I visited I was happy to find that the menu did include a few more treats such as hot pot and bowls of soup noodles.

Today though I was staying on theme and was here to check out the Braised Chicken Rice

HOW TO ORDER AT YANG’S

You enter through the door to the right of Hua Lau Chan and head upstairs to a small compact dining room with a hatch from where everything happens.

You order at the table, accessing the menu through a QR code to order before paying through the hatch with cash to be given a buzzer.

It all felt a little bit overkill as when I came in it was just me and one other couple, mind you someone still had to explain to me what to do

Surprisingly quickly the buzzer sounded and I headed up to the hatch to collect my tray with bowl of Braised chicken and an empty bowl to collect and fill my own rice from the rice cooker alongside the counter

YANG’S BRAISED CHICKEN RICE

I was pretty pleased with the look of my bowl of Braised chicken and steamed rice.

There seemed to be a decent amount of chicken thigh floating around in the casserole broth and also some large chunks of mixed pepper.

The bowl of self spooned rice was as big as I had chosen. It was classic steam cooker rice plain and a little sticky so easy to pick up (even with chopsticks). I thought that this was pretty good value for £9

I ate my meal with the chopsticks fishing out the bits and pieces one by one, as well as lifting out clumps of rice in between surprisingly easily.

You also got a soup spoon which I used to mix the rice into the broth so that I could scoop out mouthfuls of rice mixed with the soup as I reached the bottom of the bowl.

BRAISED CHICKEN BOWL

The braised chicken itself was cooked perfectly, it was tender and silky, soft to the bite and gently flavoured almost simply in its own stock.

The menu said that it was on the bone but I was happy to find that most of mine was boneless with perhaps just two or three pieces with small bone on them.

The broth also contained some mushroom and a little sliced onion but it was mostly chicken alongside chunks of yellow, green, orange pepper.

Flavourwise, apart from the chicken I was picking up ginger, soy, and a little gentle fragrance I suspect maybe sweet bean paste. I think that there was probably a bit of rice wine in there as well but it was all quite subtle and well balanced.

I really enjoyed this meal, it was very easy to eat and felt nourishing as well as being a quite light meal. I was in and out within 30 minutes and that would be perfect if I was popping in for a lunch visit.

Now that I have the ‘main event’ I need to come back for the Noodle dishes especially the Braised Beef Noodle Soup as that is my not so guilty pleasure. I am sure that I will be posting again after that 🙂

Yang’s Braised Chicken Rice is located at 21A Market Street in Nottingham, NG1 6HX above Hui Lau Shan.