Family Eats at Pecking Order

Aug 10, 2012 No Comments ›› admin

While I love to cook and do so often, I also relish my family’s restaurant visits as a break from the daily grind. It’s probably not surprising that our regular haunts have a lot in common with the chef list for Purple Asparagus’ upcoming Corks & Crayons. We’ve logged in a lot of Open Table points at Big Jones, Sable, and Farmhouse.

With a busy fall coming up – my son’s starting travel soccer, which likely means 2 games a weekend – I’m glad to have found a quick service restaurant that satisfies our desire for good food, a decent price, and top quality meats. On Saturday, we visited Pecking Order. Christine Subido, formerly the chef of Wave, opened this palace of Filipino poultry with her adorable mom.

Subido offers the antibiotic and hormone free Freebird chickens broiled, grilled and fried. Because leftover chicken is as good as money in the bank, my husband and I ordered a half chicken each of the roasted and grilled varieties. Our son, Thor, boldly selected the chicken wings, which, surprisingly, he demolished. It was a close call on my favorite, but I think if one edged out the other slighty, I’d have to call it for the grilled variety. There are four ways to sauce your bird – I tried two. The banana ketchup was sweet and lovely, but the P.O. sauce was salty, nuanced, and haunting.

There are plenty of sides to cozy up to the hens. On Saturday, we had some rich sweet corn brightened up with a healthy spritz of lime, fat green beans dressed with a brick red sauce of disintegrated tomatoes, and the Subido family’s buttery, garlicky rice.

Thor washed his wings down with an Izze. We adults chose a “boozy” punch each. Mine was dotted with chunks of strawberries and calamansi, apparently a tiny super tart lemon – I need to track it down for Purple Asparagus’ January citrus lesson plan.

Located on Clark in Uptown, it’s not too far from the lakefront soccer fields that I’ll be frequently far too often this autumn. I think Subido’s Pecking Order may become a standing order in our family.