We’ve been just demolishing a ton of restaurants around the Theater District since we’ve been going to a lot of Broadway shows. This restaurant was on our eyes to go to, but they always take a small break between 4 to 5 PM, so it can put a little time crunch if you have a show around 6:30 to 7 PM. However despite the restaurant being small with probably 5 or 6 tables, we were able to walk in on a Sunday evening around 5:30 PM without reservations. The food here is less about your normal Thai food, and more about chicken set meals.
Ambiance & Service
The service here is very fast casual, and the kitchen appears very small. It reminded me much of the East Village type restaurants where its primary clientele will be take out orders. What that also means was that you can flag the wait staff pretty quickly. There appeared to be about 2 people working the front, but they weren’t terribly busy.
The food came out within 5-10 minutes when ordering, so it’s a pretty fast turn around.
Food
The Thai Iced Tea ($3.95) came in a large glass and tasted like a normal Thai iced tea. The one sense that I did think about was that it did taste pretty sweet. Once the ice melted a bit more, it was more balanced.
The Grilled Chicken set ($15.95) came with lemongrass grilled chicken, tangy tamarind sauce, corn salad, and sticky rice. The grilled chicken tasted pretty good, though it wasn’t charred as much as I would have liked. The tangy tamarind sauce reminded me of a fish sauce concoction. It came with a side of chicken soup which was not seasoned much, so it may taste bland to some people’s palettes. I’m not quite sure why sticky rice was chosen to complement this. If it gets annoying to eat, you can put the sticky rice in the soup, and it will be easier to chew through. Regardless, everything here was pretty good, especially at the price point.
The Zab Fried Chicken set ($15.95) came with fried chicken with ZAB seasoning, tangy tamarind sauce, corn salad, and sticky rice. For this, I chose dark meat. ZAB seasoning is some special mix of spicy, citrus, salt, and a hint of sweetness. The chicken was fried to pure perfection. The batter was very crispy, crunchy, not greasy, not salty, and tasted fantastic. I can probably eat this again if it came down to it. Just like the “grilled chicken” set above, the sides were all the same. Between the grilled chicken and the zab fried chicken, I much prefer the zab fried chicken.
Final Verdict
Three Roosters offers a good, tasty, and fairy inexpensive chicken meal. What I really enjoyed about this restaurant was the quality of the food tasted all pretty good. If you’re around this area and looking to dine inexpensively, this restaurant is a pretty decent choice.
Yelp Jabs
The chicken was definitely the best parts of the plates; the other parts were not so good. The rice was extremely plain white rice and the salad was also pretty plain. The soup just tasted like very salty water.
This Elitist probably has a “cigarette tongue”, but I’ll forgive them. The rice tastes like rice, so I’m not sure what they expected. The salad has a small dressing in it, so it’s not going to be that strong. My soup tasted like it was bland, but you can taste the chicken flavors in the stock. If you have some palette and can tell flavors outside of just savory and sweet, you can make notice of that subtlety.
The dipping sauce this came with was quite spicy.
Although spicy is very subjective, I did feel that there was a mild heat to the tamarind sauce. The ZAB seasoning was not spicy much, but it gave it a good balance of different sensations. If you can handle normal non-Thai spicy, you will be able to handle this just fine.
Revisions
- Nov 19, 2023 - Initial revision.