By Jessica Dailey
Chinese take-out often gets a bad-rap, but those concerns can be forgotten when dining in Chinatown, where Bo Bo Poultry Market supplies every seven out of ten chickens to restaurants and shops. Bo Bo Poultry processes its chickens “Buddhist style,” meaning that the feet and heads must remain on eviscerated chickens.
“Having the whole chicken completely intact is very important to the Chinese,” says Anita Lee, who runs Bo Bo Poultry in Brooklyn, New York. “We have customers who feel the neck of a chicken before buying it to make sure it’s ok.”
Anita Lee at the New Amsterdam Market
The most important quality for Bo Bo’s Chinese customers is the accordance with the strict rules of the Buddhist religion. To qualify as a true Buddhist style chicken, the bird’s neck must be completely free of any nicks or imperfections.
Lee’s father Richard bought his first egg-laying farm by the Catskills Mountains in 1978 and opened a live poultry market under the Williamsburg Bridge seven years later. Instead of raising the type of chickens raised by most American poultry farmers, Lee and his brother David wanted chickens that would taste more like those they ate growing up in Hong Kong. They decided to raise breeds that are more popular among the Chinese immigrant community, like the Barred Silver Cross and the Cornish Cross.
When they first opened, Bo Bo sold less than 80 chickens a day to local patrons, but the business grew quickly. In 1998, the company built a 35,000 square foot processing plant in Williamsburg, Brooklyn to keep up with demand. The plant was the first in the nation that could handle Chinese-style poultry production.
The company eventually increased its offerings to include roosters, partridges, guinea hens, silky bantams, quail eggs and rabbits, based upon season and availability. Today, Bo Bo ships nearly 7,000 birds to stores and restaurants across the nation every day.
The chickens are fed only soybeans and corn and roam freely for 13 weeks – more than twice as long as typical supermarket chickens – resulting in a leaner, but much more flavorful bird.
“They are very, very different from American chickens,” says Ping Chan, a regular customer at Cheong Charn market, where she buys her Bo Bo chickens. “It’s like fish. The fresher, the tastier.”
A perfectly whole chicken is also important for the Chinese New Year. Using knives or cleavers during the holiday season is considered extremely unlucky for the family. Any bruises or marks on the chicken can add to possible misfortune.
“It’s good luck to have a whole chicken,” says Lee. Many of their customers use the chickens for prayer. “It would be bad to place a chicken with missing parts on a shrine to your ancestors.”
Not only are the birds suitable for prayer and holidays, but customers use every part of the chicken. “Americans have a tendency to waste so many parts of animals we eat,” says Lee. “We use the neck and feet for stock.”
Lee says that looking at the bird’s eyes is the best way to tell if it’s fresh. But with Bo Bo, freshness is never a problem; they kill the chickens the day before they are delivered. It’s like having a farm in your backyard.
Try a Bo Bo recipe: Silky Chicken Tonic Soup
Restaurants that serve Bo Bo chickens:
Oriental Garden
14 Elizabeth St.
New York, NY 10013
New Malaysia
Located inside the Chinatown Arcade
48 Bowery St.
New York, NY 10013
www.malaysiakitchennyc.com
Kien Tuong
83 Chrystie St.
New York, NY 10002
East Corner Wonton
70 East Broadway
New York, NY 10002
To purchase your own Bo Bo chicken, you can visit:
Jeffrey’s Meat Market
Located in the Essex Street Market
120 Essex St.
New York, NY 10002
www.jeffreysmeatmarket.com
Tai Chong Meat Market
128 Mott St.
New York, NY 10013
Cheong Charn
135 Mott St.
New York, NY 10013
Tung Lay Meat Market
124 Mott St.
New York, NY 10013
For more locations, visit Bo Bo Poultry’s website.
Image of Anita Lee by Annie Myers via Thoughts on the Table
Image of bird being cut by Dave Cook via Flickr
Image of Bo Bo Poultry Market by ErrorSystem
Image of whole chicken by Culinary Studio via Flickr
