An Orange County chicken shop that spatchcocks a bird, blasts it over open flame, and finishes it with a garlic sauce you will still be thinking about at two in the morning.
Dizzy Bird started in Mission Viejo and now has a spot at Irvine Spectrum, over near Target, and it is very, very good at exactly one thing: rotisserie chicken the Mediterranean way. The birds are spatchcocked, which means split and laid flat, then roasted over an open flame the way you would find in Lebanon, Greece, and the countries around them. The chicken is halal and hormone-free. The reason you are actually here is the garlic sauce.
The birds are cut flat, blasted over flame, and finished with a heavy pour of garlic sauce.
Get the Silly Bird wrap. It is the internet-famous one for a reason: the chicken, lemon-garlic roasted potatoes, and that Dizzy Bird sauce rolled into one very good thing. If you want to feel responsible about it, there are bowls and salads. If you want to be happy, there is pita, pickles, and a plate of chicken you tear apart with your hands.
It is fast-casual, so you order at the counter and it comes out quick, but the flavor punches so far above the format it feels like cheating. This is a fifteen-dollar lunch that ruins other fifteen-dollar lunches for you.
Skip the fussy dinner once in a while. A whole spatchcocked bird, the garlic sauce, the potatoes, and a stack of warm pita is one of the best cheap thrills in the county, full stop.
The details
- Where
- 920 Spectrum Center Dr, Irvine (Irvine Spectrum, near Target)
- Kitchen
- Mediterranean rotisserie chicken, halal
- Website
- dizzybird.com
- Go for
- The Silly Bird wrap, a whole spatchcock bird, lemon-garlic potatoes
Sources and further reading: Dizzy Bird, Irvine Spectrum Center, Irvine Community Connection. Photography by Tide & Canyon.
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