Pioneer Chicken

When I was growing up, Pioneer Chicken was all over the LA area. By 1990 most Pioneer Chicken restaurants had been taken over by Church's Fried Chicken (YUCK) or turned Mexican or Chinese restaurants.

But there are still five Pioneer Chicken restaurants left!!! The two locations I've been to, the chicken still has that great crunch on the outside and juicy meat on the inside.

904 S. Soto St.(Soto and Whitter)
Los Angeles 90023
(323)262-4562

1321 Echo Park Ave. (at Sunset)
Los Angeles
(213)481-1580

Here is a link to another Pioneer Chicken topic that's in this forum as well. I thought i'd save the trouble of posting the same message twice:

http://www.roadfood.com/Forums/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=6167

Pioneer Chicken was mentioned in the late Warren Zevon Song Carmelita. The Line Goes "and I'm all strung out on Heroin by the Pioneer Chicken stand."

Southern Californian here too. I really didn't care much for the chicken because the batter would be crispy, but often the skin was floppy.

What I did LOVE was the battered chicken strips with that BBQ sauce that was almost sweet & sour.

I didn't know there were any left. However, someone who live in Silverlake told me there was a Pioneer Market, but no Pioneer Chicken.

quote:

Originally posted by Antihound

When I was growing up, Pioneer Chicken was all over the LA area. By 1990 most Pioneer Chicken restaurants had been taken over by Church's Fried Chicken (YUCK) or turned Mexican or Chinese restaurants.

But there are still five Pioneer Chicken restaurants left!!! The two locations I've been to, the chicken still has that great crunch on the outside and juicy meat on the inside.

Thanks for this information! I used to get to LA on business occasionally, and LOVED to find a Pioneer Chicken store!

Mmmm, bucket 'o gizzards at Pioneer.

Popeye's Chicken is pretty good. And their sides are good. I prefer it to the old Kentucky Fried Chicken stuff. Could it fill in for the Pioneer Chicken???

Popeye's chicken is okay. I like the spicy. It can't fill in though, because it is so different.

One complaint I have about Popeye's is that it is often to greasy (especially the fish and shrimp) like they don't have the oil hot enough.

Every time I get back home to Boss Angeles (KHJ lives!) from the least coast (where I currently reside), I try to always hit the Pioneer Chicken at Echo Park & Sunset. Parking can be a bit tight at lunchtime for my Grand Cherokee... And, there are some "Sysco-ized" menu items added sincy my younger days in Pasadena... but that chicken is still the best!

quote:

Originally posted by Antihound

When I was growing up, Pioneer Chicken was all over the LA area. By 1990 most Pioneer Chicken restaurants had been taken over by Church's Fried Chicken (YUCK) or turned Mexican or Chinese restaurants.

But there are still five Pioneer Chicken restaurants left!!! The two locations I've been to, the chicken still has that great crunch on the outside and juicy meat on the inside.

904 S. Soto St.(Soto and Whitter)
Los Angeles 90023
(323)262-4562

1321 Echo Park Ave. (at Sunset)
Los Angeles
(213)481-1580

I've been to all of the Five Pioneer Chicken restaurants still functioning. Since I live in Hollywood I can only go to three(considering the ****ty traffic in L.A.), Sunset/Fountain, Echo park, and Olympic & San Vicente. I like all of them, East L.A. is o.k. Bell Gardens has a real time-capsuled feel but the two are somewhat far from me. The employees at the Echo park location seemed like zombies or have no personality, at least the ones working there the last time I went. I still dig it since it was the 1st Pioneer stand. Irene's off of Olympic is awsome, she's super nice and I try to go there when I'm around the area. The chicken is so good and I know that they use Lawry's seasoning salt which is a plus. The one off of Sunset/Fountain is the one I go to most often, their chicken is just like I remembered it tasting back in the 80's. The employees are cool and you can substitute for certain pieces on combos. I usually go there before or after a Dodger game. I am very fond of Pioneer, while growing up back in the 80's my mom used to take me there a lot. We would go to the one in the shopping center off of Western ave and 18th St. between Venice & Washington across from Mc Donalds. Although it's no longer there, I still cherish those memories of my mom and I ordering corn on the cob spinning in the machine with butter and the golden-crisped chicken on a basket and drinking from those yellow, orange and red logo pioneer cups. I always dip the chicken in their gravy and it tastes so good along with their spicy rice, man... I think I just might drive down to Pioneer Chicken tonight!!!

The best gizzards ever!

On a business trip to LA in the late '70s, I had a fried chicken dinner at Pioneer. I remember being unimpressed by the chicken, thinking at the time that KFC did it better. Now, thirty years later, the quality at KFC has gone so far downhill that Pioneer's chicken would probably look darn good by comparison.

I thought I would jot down this post...I went to the Pioneer Chicken on Echo Park and Sunset on March 11, 2009 and it was closed (6pm).   I am not sure if it is permanently shut down or it was a one time thing.

I would say I have been hitting this location up about twice a month for the past four years....but the past month the chicken has been served up like it had been sitting a long while.  

Also, the area has declined big time, with homeless living around the parking lot and what looked like drug dealers by the MTA bus stand.

I am happy to report that the location in Bell Gardens is still doing great business, and seemed to have the most consistent product. (And an A rating in the window....the Echo Park location had a B...and sometimes had water pouring from the roof during heavy rains)

Also, the last time I went to the Olympic/Soto location the food was less than stellar, and compounding the problem was them giving me all dark meat pieces...boy was I hot when I got home!

Sierra Explorer


Every time I get back home to Boss Angeles (KHJ lives!) from the least coast (where I currently reside), I try to always hit the Pioneer Chicken at Echo Park & Sunset. Parking can be a bit tight at lunchtime for my Grand Cherokee... And, there are some "Sysco-ized" menu items added sincy my younger days in Pasadena... but that chicken is still the best!

 
Pasadena's own KRLA, 1110AM always kicked KHJ's butt back in the 60s and 70s, better mix of new songs, better oldies and much better disc jockeys. I am a native Crown Citian and still live in Pasadena in my 59th year. The best fried chicken ever was Brown's Chicken Palace on Lincoln & Woodbury just over the border in Altadena, they were around from the mid-60s til Ol' Man Brown died suddenly in 1973 and his children couldn't maintain their father's  old school Mississippian roots recipe .  Also Bill's Fried Chicken on Washington and Lake was a fabulous place too, when Bill died in the 90s, another family took it over and it's pretty good but nowhere as good as when Bill ran it for over 30 years. A small chain of fried chicken places in the San Gabriel Valley was Dixie Fried Chicken, they were over taken by the KFC expansion of the 70s when they went corporate, yet their excellent breading mix still survives and is sold in markets in So Cal
 
The Pionner Chicken place you cite on Echo Park Ave And Sunset Bl in Eacho Park district L A is the original one and it was part of the Pioneer Supermarkets where they began selling the chicken inside and branched out to fried chicken outlets. Ever sine the earlyn1980s, even at the anchor restaurant Pioneer Chicken is but a shadow of what it used to be, something changed and it went downhill fast

WOW....   Brown's Chicken Palace on Lincoln & Woodbury 

I hadn't thought of that place in many, many years.

I'm 57.  My grandparents lived on Windsor near Woodbury in Altadena.

That fried chicken was special!

PS.  I was all Sam Riddle and KHJ!

mar52


WOW....   Brown's Chicken Palace on Lincoln & Woodbury 

I hadn't thought of that place in many, many years.

I'm 57.  My grandparents lived on Windsor near Woodbury in Altadena.

That fried chicken was special!

PS.  I was all Sam Riddle and KHJ!

 
 
My dad was a personal friend of Mister Brown for several years before he opened up Brown's Chicken Palace, he started that business after retiring from L A County Parks and Recreation Dept. He did it to avoid boredom amd because he had quite a rep for his fabulous BBQ, fried chicken and other assorted platters. If like our family you knew him well, he might invite you to take a sip of his home made brew he prepared as well as some down home moonshine he also liked to make. He had a smoker in the back yard of his establishment and within a few motnhs of opening was very sucessful, walk up/take out, delivery and catering, he was a gregarious happy go lucky forever smiling man, it was so sad he had a heart attack and passed away just a few years after his business began, he was in his early 60s, much to young. His wife and children tried to keep it going but the recipes were inside his head and he never wrote them down, it was never the same
 


 

mar52




PS.  I was all Sam Riddle and KHJ!

Tina Delgado's alive, ALIVE!!!!!

Well I have to admit, I also liked The REAL Don Steele!

Tina Delgado's alive, ALIVE!!!!!

I was too young to know if my grandparents "knew" the Browns.

They did know good chicken.

mar52


Well I have to admit, I also liked The REAL Don Steele!

Tina Delgado's alive, ALIVE!!!!!

Good Morgan, Los Angeles!!!!

Funny,  just as I was done with that last post I was thinking about Robert W.

That man gave me $1000 and a trip to Hawaii when he was at KRTH.

Miss them all.  

Pioneer Chicken picked up and moved to Southeast Asia in the 1980s. There were a couple of hangover outlets in the Hollywood area, which were still there when I left California in 2006.



In Indonesia, the local pronunciation for Pioneer was PEE ON AIR. The name was subsequently changed to California Fried Chicken (or CFC). This was the most Indonesian fast food chain to be found, even though it had a menu of fried chicken, French fries, and sandwiches (chicken burgers and shrimp burgers... the latter were absolutely delectable!)

On October 12, 2002, several outlets of CFC were bombed at Kuta Beach on the island of Bali. It may sound strange to us, but there were several in a small area of Denpasar. It was such a great loss on CFC that the company went bankrupt and the assets went to KFC, Kentucky Fried Chicken.

So sad!