Hungry Chimp’s Cashew-Nut Chicken

Finding good food from around Male’ and recommending them to you is one of the most enjoyable parts of what we do. This time we are putting the focus on a dish that in our opinion delivers real value for money and we are talking about Hungry Chimp’s Cashew-Nut Chicken.  

The bite sized chicken pieces are deep fried and seasoned well. Chicken when covered in unseasoned thick batter and deep fried to solid rock hardness is to be detested, and thankfully these were the opposite of that!

And while we are on the topic, did you know that the chicken bits in the traditional version of cashew chicken are stir fried and not deep fried? The cashew chicken dish with deep fried chicken was invented in the 60s by David Leong, a chef who had moved to the US from China and had trouble getting Americans to like his food. Inspired by the American love for fried chicken, he came up with a version of cashew chicken that had fried chicken in it, and it turned out to be such a success that soon after introducing his version, he opened Leong's Tea House in Springfield, and his cashew chicken became known as Springfield style cashew chicken.

Anyway, getting back to Hungry Chimp, their dish had a good helping of cashew nuts; not stingy at all, bravo, and there were onions, green onions, bell peppers and bits of dried red chilli. The dish did have some heat in it, like a 5 out of a 10 level of heat, very manageable and we like that. The sauce was quite good too. It felt garlicky; a bit of maybe soy sauce in there, and it was slightly sweet too, perhaps from something like hoisin.

It came with a decent bed of basmati rice, it cost MVR 75, and it was a good filling meal. And we definitely recommend you have it delivered to your doorstep the next time you get hungry, way before you get hangry.