Little Chicken House — Restaurant in Pacific Grove

Used to come to Monterey on the weekends growing up. The Little Chicken house was always one of my favorite places to get some local food from. I've literally eaten from here at least once a year for my entire life of 29 years as of writing this. I don't live close enough to Monterey any more to come as often, but when we used to go each weekend I would almost always have a meal here.

The owners are really nice guys, everything is their family recipe (at least the meats are), and it's always been nice seeing them. They have a good life story, and this restaurant is their entire focus for the last few decades.

The real star of the menu is the chicken. As the places name suggests, that's the specialty and why you should eat here. Yes they have other meat options, but those can sometimes be hit or miss and not always available each day. As they don't run the smoker out front everyday anymore. The chicken though is cooked on this central rotisserie inside using local oak logs. One of my favorite pieces is the wings when you order a full or half chicken. They get perfectly crispy and we'll seasoned, they leave the wing tips on as well and that's the best part. Then you get to the rest of the chicken and it's just exactly how you'd expect perfect bbq rotisserie chicken to be. Eat it hot and fresh or you'll lose some of that crispy skin. Whatever seasoning they use on the chicken is really the secret to it's success. That combined with the oak smoke.

Are they objectively the best bbq around? Probably not if we're being honest. Yet when I'm craving some bbq chicken, this place is the only option for me. It's like having a home cooked meal for me, it's childhood. Plus on a good day, their chicken does become objectively better than everyone else around (they are pretty consistent overall though, but it's a two man team and some days they are just good instead of great).

The Little Chicken House is forever a happy place for me, and always brings me back home to childhood memories of Monterey and Pacific Grove. Keep these guys around, give them some business when you can....

This review is for anybody getting food to go (maybe dine-in is better?) This was the WORST FOOD we have ever been given in the last 20 years of traveling. It was by far the worst BBQ we have ever seen or tasted. We totally agree with the previous review that received take-out that was so bad they just threw it away. We ordered 1 of the the 3 meat plate (Pork, Chicken, Ribs) with fries and cornbread (about $29). The pork was days old, dry, and tough. The chicken was also old and tough. The ribs were the worst without much meat on them at all. All 3 meats were slathered with a red colored sauce that absolutely had no flavor! It wasn't sweet, salty, spicy, or even like ketchup, it was just red and wet. The meats we were given should have just been thrown out. I can't imagine this place can stay in business giving this kind of food to their drive-through customers. It may have been because we had out of state plates and they knew we wouldn't be back, but hopefully enough of us leave honest reviews to help others avoid this place. SERIOUSLY, avoid this place as ANY OTHER FOOD would have been so...

This place is flat out not good. Also not BBQ. I had to ask what the “sauce” they literally poured all over all of the meat was. They said it was bbq sauce but it was essentially watered down ketchup. Their turkey tasted like it had been sitting around all day and was hard and tuff- same with the brisket which wasn’t even brisket meat. The chicken was decent and the only thing i would ever think about getting again (but not after what we saw when we were leaving. Read below) Their Mac n cheese was penne noodles with a tiny bit of cheese melted on top. Their mashed potatoes were not seasoned whatsoever. I made the mistake and walked to the back to wash my hands and the kitchen is SO unsanitary. And then as we were leaving they came out and hung a raw rotisserie chicken rack on the TOP of all of the cooked ones and managed to rub the raw chicken on the top 2 rungs of cooked chicken. This place needs to be shut down by the health inspectors because I truly worry I got food poisoning or salmonella tonight. Needless to say we didn’t take more than a few bites and left and will...