Fri 08.29.08

Pollo a la Brasa

Ah, the benefits of having a broken air conditioner in your car: you save on gas by not having an AC to run, your coworkers never ask you to drive when your team has to carpool, and best of all, since your windows will almost always be down, you're more likely to notice the incredible smell coming from some otherwise unremarkable-seeming building, a smell that demands you postpone your plans in order to investigate further, which in turns leads you to discover what may be the greatest thing that has ever happened to chicken, like ever. Which is the Peruvian polleria, home of pollo a la brasa.

Pollo a la brasa is a rotisserie chicken seasoned with a paste of huacatay ('black mint' which, I've been told, can be found fresh only in Peru or Bolivia), yellow aji (a kind of chile), cumin, annatto seed, and lots of garlic, and then roasted slowly over charcoal. It tastes impossibly good. Of course, the skin is crisp, the meat is juicy; but more than anything you get the impression that this is a consummate expression of chicken-ness, in all its proud glory. (Which brings up a sore spot for me: why do people say chicken is boring? Chicken is not boring. Just treat it with some dignity and not as some bland protein vehicle.)

Culinary profundity aside, it is decidedly un-fancy and inexpensive food. For the price of lunch for one at of the many places in the area, I walked away with a whole chicken (unfortunately quartered -- I will need to ask them to leave it whole next time I get it to go), a cucumber salad, and orders of rice and beans and fried yuca, the last of which dutifully used to scrape up the last bits of the seasoning from the back of the chicken.