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| - I've said before that Chinese cuisine is severely lacking in the valley so it's pretty refreshing to see more Chinese restaurants pop up recently. Nuro bistro is the third Hainan chicken restaurant I've tried in the area. Flock & Fowl remains my gold standard, while Big Wong's is my go-to hole-in-the-wall for cheap eats. We visited Nuro this past weekend, which had only been open for about two weeks. I like the simplicity of their menu, offering a chicken-based theme around the traditional chicken and rice as well as chicken noodle soup.
We started our meal with the Nuro chicken wings, which looked very crispy. However, we were all quite disappointed after taking bites into the chicken wings only to discover that they weren't crispy at all. I liked the spicy lime sauce on the side, but chicken wings are meant to be crispy and these were very under-fried.
Moving on to our entrees, I was quite impressed by the clean presentation of the chicken and rice, reminiscent of the plating from Flock & Fowl. We tried the breast meat, served with skin and bones for $9.75. It was served with three sauce options of soy, spicy chili, and a ginger scallion sauce. While the poached chicken was good, it was no where as tender as Flock & Fowl's and closer to that of Big Wong's (with a higher price point). The stock seasoned rice was average. As for the chicken noodle soup, I could appreciate the rice noodles and the broth, which was quite flavorful. But again, I found my poached chicken to be a little on the rubbery side. On top of that, the portion was small for $8.95 - I would've had much larger options had I gone to a Vietnamese restaurant and ordered ph gà.
I did find the service to be excellent as we were frequently checked on; however, my last gripe was the Yelp check-in offer. My girlfriend and I got the lemon iced sweet tea and Vietnamese drip coffee respectively with the check-in (supposedly for free, but later mistakingly charged). I didn't realize until after I left and paid the bill that we were charged for those drinks, which I guess was also my fault for not looking at it more closely at the time of payment.
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