Dakao Poultry

We use this slaughterhouse for all of our fresh chicken needs. Good for phở ga. The chicken here tastes better than any store bought chicken, regardless if it is organic, free range, gluten-​free, GMO or whatever B.S. designation is being touted this year. The chicken here has a springy texture to it, and a good amount of subcutaneous fat. Sometimes we will get chicken from Baladi down the street. Both places are good. Why are all the chicken slaughterhouses in Orange County located in Midway City, an unincorporated county area? The area is a little shady.

I’m currently on a ramen obsession and I needed to source some good chickens to make the stock.
Dakao Poultry is pretty mysterious when you come in. Right when you enter there is a cash register, and no signage at all. You can get a whole chicken with it being male or female. If I remember correctly, I think the employee said the female’s meat tasted better with the male’s bones making a better stock. The chicken comes with the head and claws.
Also you can buy chicken bones for a dirt steal of .70 cents a pound.
As for my personal preparation I used a pressure cooker for the bones I bought. The result was a super nice gelatinous stock. What was kind of weird (in a good way) was when I cooked the chicken bones, not much scum came out as usual.
Meatwise, the chickens are pretty lean and don’t come with much. With that being said, I prefer these chickens for stock creation.
Knowing Vietnamese will give you the opportunity to ask more questions, but they do speak some English. Lastly credit cards are accepted.

I’m so glad my mother never makes me go inside these places… I’ve always associated poultry stories as scary and smelly! But my mother loves this place. Her and my sisters always go here when they need duck or chicken for chao vit and chao ga. It’s constant good quality and fresh, plus it’s located 3 minutes driving distance from our house. We also love getting their precut wings/​drumsticks so we can make chicken wings at home. There’s really nothing bad to say about this place.

Best poultry joint with brand new facility. You can hear the birds crying in the background. All glorious offals are available for purchase.

If you just need a fresh chicken from a chicken killer, this place is comparable to Baladi Poultry just a block down.
Parking here is a little easier since they have their own parking lot in the back.
Chicken: 4 Stars, Parking Lot: 1 Star = 5 Stars.

I didn’t go to Dakao Poultry, nor did I have to wrangle the chicken, but I did have the awesome chicken soup my wife made with the chicken she got from here and it DOES taste different. There is a stronger chicken taste to the broth. Can’t explain it.

I had heard about this place for a long time now and there is nothing better than a fresh chicken. What’s the difference you might ask. Well, there is a huge difference in the texture of the chicken meat. However, since I was only making soup with it today, it really shouldn’t matter, but since I was in the area, I decided to check it out.
The place is clean. It didn’t stink either. I had been to the chicken place in LA’s chinatown and it stank like high heaven. I couldn’t bear to be in there for more than a minute or two. This place is definitely a winner in my book.
There are 2 types of chicken — brown or regular. The regular ones are HUGE, like capons. The brown ones are $ 9 each and the capon ones are sold by the pound.
When I brought it home, the feet and head were still intact. I totally forgot that they sold chickens this way in Asia. OH BOY! So here I am trying to get rid of the head… I used some poultry shears and OMG, I got such a bad case of heeby jeebies and let out a few shouts here and there. One time, I accidentally poked the eye and it opened. WHOA!!!
Next time I’m having them remove the head before I bring it home.

yeah, when my mom sent me to buy some chicken i was like oh holy crap its that place they used to make us go to when we were kids. Tiem Ga Vit Song. and that place was RANK. seriously. but this time the palce was clean i saw what they had behind the window and the man had my chicken ready within seconds.
the only problem, you should specify when you want a big chicken just saying two chickens is not enough i thought they had an average sizes. and mother complained that i didnt tell them to get the big ones. gosh idk. i eat KFC.
the parking sucks. when i was waiting in line behind some man i kept thinking, is my car okay? its just street parking. and the place is so TINY. but whatever, the chicken was good for what mother needed to cook with it.
CASH ONLY. you can call to order.

As a kid, I used to hate going with my parents to the Tiem Ga Vit Song, or Live Poultry and Egg shop to buy freshly killed chicken and fresh hen eggs, in addition to the creepy delicacy known as Ga Vit Lon or duck embryo eggs (balut).
There was this one other place right down the street I recall in particular, this tiny shoebox of a store, if you want to call it that. You walked in and it felt like you were stepping into some shady medical clinic, surrounded by blech white walls with only a window partition that was shut tightly until you rang a bell for service. Ding! Door slides across and you put in your order to the brusque clerk. Door slides shut again and then a few minutes later, your freshly killed chicken is shoved through the window, all boxed and bagged. As a kid, I would imagine that the poor bird was getting slaughtered while we stood there and waited and I always thought I would hear squawking or something, but never did. But it was the smell that got to me, this earthy, acrid odor that only live poultry can give off.
So I was prepared to pinch my nostrils inside Dakao but it was super clean inside, no foul stench at all. There’s still a window partition, but it’s much bigger and had actual see-​through windows. Beyond the windows was an immaculate, stainless steel kitchen set up, where my mom tells me if you come early in the morning, you can see workers pulling out feathers on killed chickens.
Now of course, some of you might be wondering, uh, why freshly killed chicken as opposed to the nice and neat Foster Farms stuff at Ralphs? Freshly killed chicken yields a lot more bite and spring to the meat, not all mushy like what’s referred to as «ga my» or American chicken. It’s perfect in phở or banh canh (Vietnamese udon) goi ga or Vietnamese cole slaw. It’s also great simply steamed and eaten with muoi tieu chanh (lemon, pepper and salt dipping sauce) my fave or with mam gung or ginger fish sauce.