Merry's House of Chicken - West Covina

I am a little hesitant to writing this review as it will be a little biased toward the good side since wifey knows owner/friend's with owner's daughter.

So location wise, is it located in a strip mall in West Covina, near the Walnut border. It is a good location for the area, but not so good overall because if you are travelling from afar, it is no where near a freeway. Parking lot space is somewhat inadequate for the strip mall. The restaurant itself is family run, with nice and helpful people. They also have various Indonesian packaged snacks on sale, and previously made Indonesian dessert/snack foods also for sale. They also do some baking here if you are interested in special Indonesian style cakes.

The food:

Their Specialty Fried Chicken - (Ayam Kremesan) - We ordered a full chicken to eat between the 4.5 of us. Of notice, this isn't your steroid injected chicken, this is more what Indonesians call Country Chicken, or what we call Free Range Chickens. They are relatively smaller than what you are used to. The chicken was cooked well, no pink areas on the insides, the meat still moist despite the thinness of the chicken. The star of this is the "kremesan" which is the crunchy flour bits that is sprinkled all over the chicken. This and their awesome spicy sauce (sambal) is golden. 4.5/5 stars

We also ordered an oxtail soup - this one is the one in regular broth. I have actually never had oxtail before so I have no comparison, but the broth was rich and the meat soft and tender. It was tasty overall. 4.5/5 stars

Also on our eat list was the martabak telor - which is like egg pancakes. I have tasted better at other places for this one. Maybe too much onion? or too much scallion? I am not sure what the difference is exactly. 3/5 stars.

We were able to taste clippings off a cake their were making for twins birthday. When they shape the cake, they cut off yummy little clippings. The cake was typical Surabaya layer cake (a yellow and brown layer). Overall good tasting, similar to what I have tasted in the past. 4/5 stars

Martabak Manis/Terang Bulan - this is an Indonesian breakfast/dessert that could be described as an oversized pancake folded into halves with a combination of Nutella or chocolate sprinkles, nuts, cheese, and (sometimes coconut). This one I'm not sure if they made it or someone else was selling their wares in the store, but it was slightly overdone (slight bitter taste in the cake). 3/5 stars

Prices are a steal compared to other Indonesian places, but in general portions reflect those prices.

Overall 4/5 stars, if you want are itching to be exotic and try Indonesian food, this is authentic and I would recommend giving it a try.