The corridor roughly bounded by Montrose and Irving Park Road seems to be a magnet for the South American charcoal-fired rotisserie chicken known as pollo a la brasa. Until last summer, when Flying Chicken closed, between Lincoln Square, Irving Park, and Albany Park there were four pollerias spitting marinated whole birds over live coals, and two more are now on the way.
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Four years ago Garcia, an NIU computer science graduate, couldn’t find work in his field. But he had some savings he wanted to invest, and so without any restaurant experience he found a storefront on a lonely stretch of Kedzie and imported an eight-foot-tall stainless steel charcoal-burning rotisserie oven from home. It took five friends to wedge the thing into the tiny kitchen. Meanwhile, his dad, Luis Garcia Sr., already an avid home cook, went back to Peru to take a polla a la brasa class and returned with a pair of recipes, including one from a friend who owned his own polleria down there. Garcia took out an ad on a Peruvian AM radio program, and slowly his countrymen started coming.
He hired a Mexican chef, and at first La Granja (“The Flame”), as he called the place, only roasted chicken (using a combination of the two recipes) and served tacos, tortas, and burritos. But about half a year into it he found another chef, who’d worked at the city’s first Peruvian restaurant, the late Rinconcito Sudamericano. They dropped the Mexican stuff and adopted a full Peruvian menu, introducing dishes such as lomo saltado, beef marinated, sauteed, and served over rice; big bowls of soup like the chowdery chupe de camarones; and ceviche topped with red onions lightly pickled in lime juice, widely regarded as the Peruvian national dish.
A spicier version, pale green in color, is made with jalapeños and served with the restaurant’s other dishes. It’s particularly good with the anticuchos, which anyone thinking about dabbling in offal for the first time should consider as a gateway organ. The marinated, skewered veal heart is tender and steaky, with just a little bit of livery funk.
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4053 N. Kedzie, 773-478-0819
