Porturuvian Explorations pt 2: Pollo a la Brasa

We made an earlier trip to El Balconcito in the Northeast in search of Pollo a la Brasa, the fabled Peruvian Rotisserie Chicken, but discovered that it needed to be ordered in advance. Due to a profound inability to plan ahead, and a lack of confidence in our abilities to order chickens over the phone in Spanish, it took us a little while to make it back. We are now in the process of kicking ourselves for waiting so long. With the help of two somewhat Spanglophonic friends, we managed to pre-order a few chickens, then descended on the place to partake of this famed delicacy. The ordering seemed to go pretty smoothly, but be warned that even with advance notice, they have a finite number of chickens, and perhaps a limited roasting capacity, so if your heart is set on this particular thing, you might want to go on a slow night, and resign yourself to a bird or two.

Even after successfully completing the process, we're a little unclear about the final deadline for ordering-ahead. We reserved two chickens the night before or reservation, but then called about noon the next day and added two more, and it seemed OK. So maybe, call the day before if you can, but early the same day might be OK, if they have enough chickens. The procedure requires a few hours to marinade properly, so plan ahead.

We ordered four, and we got the sense that we were approaching their limit, at least for that day. We were a party of 9 people, and even though the chickens were of a good size, we could have easily polished them off if we had even an ounce of self-control, and had resisted ordering about a hundred other things... Upon the first bites sampled, we immediately thought we were going to have a crisis, because the chicken is incredibly delicious. We were picturing ugly fights among close friends over that last wing or leg, crazed gluttony overpowering our sense of courtesy and civility. Yes, it's that good.

This style of rotisserie chicken involves a tangy, complex marinade that results in a deep flavor and a crispy, dark-hued skin. The marinade seems to involve chile paste, the mysterious herb huacatay (sometimes called "black mint") some citrus, and we think there might be some sugar. The long marination accounts for both a delicious outer coating, and for juicy, tender meat.

To make things worse, the chickens are accompanied by excellent french fries: crisp, light, tender, and somehow staying that way for a long time. Some sort of Peruvian magic potatoes, we surmise...

Just in the nick of time, fusillades of Croquettas de Bacalao were fired at the roiling mob, and moments later a couple of flaming sausages were lobbed-in, distracting them from the birds. With the addition of a few more dishes we actually ended up with some chicken left-over, even though one of our party was a young man who arrived straight from football practice, and promptly consumed three times his body weight in french fries alone!

In addition to the chickens, we ordered several things that we'd liked from out first visit. One of the things we really love about this place is that it's got both Peruvian AND Portuguese menus. While there may not be any particular logic to combining the two cuisines, we can't resist ordering from both sides.

From the Portuguese side, the Croquettas de Bacalao were even better than we'd remembered, their perfectly cripsy coating containing a light, airy filling with more salty cod flavor than before. Chorizo was packed a bit looser and was less spicy than last time, but was still quite tasty, especially with its crispy exterior from exposure to an open flame.

Clams in Garlic were simple, but perfect, the intense broth complementing the tender clams. We tossed a handful of fries from the chicken platter into this pot, and the garlic-infusion sent them to french fry nirvana. We had more bivalves in the Clam and Pork Stew, which met with approval from our Portuguese ex-pat authenticity inspector. He was a bit surprised by the presence amount of pickled vegetables atop the clams, pork and fried potatoes, but did not seem especially disturbed. I had a very hard time refraining from eating that stew, especially once the dark brown sauce, a mixture of clam juices and pork gravy, became more accessible.

Tostones, pressed into cup-shapes then filled with seafood, were suggested by the waitress, and seemed to go over well-enough, but I don't think they were anyone's favorite dish of the night. Also from the Peruvian side, we had a Ceviche Pescado, a huge plate of marinated white fish, served with boiled potato and sweet potato. And we can never resist Lomo Saltado, the classic Peruvian dish of beef strips and french fries, stir-fried with soy sauce and gravy, to create a dish that wouldn't be too alien in an American diner, like gravy-fries studded with beef and onion.

All-in-all an amazingly delicious meal. All of it was quite good, but we're most enthusiastic about the Pollo a la Brasa, the most delicious roasted chicken I've had in some time. Peruvian Rotisserie Chicken is a bit of a phenomenon in some cities, it's much easier to find in NY and LA, and is more of a gourmet fast-food, not requiring any calling-ahead. I certainly hope the trend catches on in Philly, and we can drop in somewhere for a delicious marinated roast chicken in this style. But until that craze gets underway, you'll find me up here at El Balconcito, reveling in the chicken, and also in the other specialties of Peru and Portugal.

El Balconcito
658 E Godfrey Ave (at Tabor Rd)
Philadelphia, PA 19120
(215) 342-2340

Porturuvian in the Northeast

It started as a quest for Peruvian Chicken. That particular style of rotisserie chicken, marinated and roasted in a specific way, has been quite popular in New York for a while, but hasn't seemed to make inroads in Philly. But we'd heard it was available at El Balconcito in Northeast Philly. So we trekked on up, thinking that some roasted chicken and ceviche would make for a nice light dinner. We should have known that we're fundamentally incapable of ordering a light meal, but even keeping that in mind, we were unprepared for the banquet that resulted.

First, we'd forgotten that El Balconcito is more than a Peruvian restaurant, it's also Portuguese. The menu is divided in half, and there are extensive options from both country's traditions. Second, given the reasonable prices, we significantly underestimated the portion sizes, and therefore drastically over-ordered. Not that such behavior is a bad thing...

We started on the Portuguese side of the menu, ordering Croquettas de Bacalao (above) and Chorizo. The croquettas did not have an especially assertive salt-cod kick, tasting more of potato, but they were so ethereally light, with a perfect fried crunch, that nobody was complaining. The chorizo was served over a dramatic blue flame, which sadly didn't show-up in the photo, but did add an appealing fresh crispiness to the moderately spicy sausage.

But, let's not lose sight of why we came: rotisserie chicken. We tried to order a whole chicken, but our waitress launched into a long and involved story in rapid Spanish. Did we mention that none of us really speaks Spanish? We can pick out a few words here or there, and know just enough that we can usually stumble through ordering at restaurants, but we were having a hard time following this story. But we did sort out that there was no rotisserie chicken, and even figured out that one has to call ahead for it. We later asked, in very stilted Spanish, when we would need to call, and got a very long and complex answer, from which we extracted the word mañana, so we're pretty confident that one needs to call a day ahead.

There did not seem to be any English-speaking waitstaff, but our server was very nice, and we did fine with some pointing and simple yes-no answers to a few things we could understand: "picante?" "Si!"

But, OK... no chicken... we can handle it, there's plenty on the menu that looks good. When in Peru, what else would one get? Ceviche of course. We ordered a basic fish version (as opposed to mixed seafood) and were unprepared for the HUGE pile of it that arrived, accompanied by a potato and sweet potato. It was very tasty, but would easily have served 8 people. The three of us made a good dent in it, and even used some of the vibrant, spicy, citrusy marinade as a condiment for a few other dishes, but we just couldn't finish it.

Another Peruvian specialty is Lomo Saltado, a stir-fry of beef strips, onion, tomato and french fries. It's pretty strange: the fries are soggy with sauce, the spicing is pretty subtle, and yet we came close to finishing it off, it has an inexplicable appeal.

As a consolation for not getting the roasted chicken, we tried the Chicharones de Pollo. While not anything especially unique, they were very tasty chunks of fried chicken, both greaseless and juicy. One could choose two accompaniments, and not having perceived how carbolicious the meal as a whole would be, we chose rice and Tostones. The fried discs of plantain were good, although we ended up using them as accompaniments for some of the other saucier dishes, rather than as partners for the chicken.

Finally, we headed back to Portugal for what was perhaps our favorite dish of the night: a stew of Pork and Clams. You can't actually see the pork in this photo, but there was a ton of it hiding below the clams, pickled vegetables, olives and crisp roasted potatoes. All were luxuriating in a rich brown sauce, which complimented the tender cubes of pork beautifully. This is comfort food at its best, and a huge portion for under $15.

We accompanied everything with a few Peruvian Beers (Cristal and Cusquena) and still got out for not a lot of money. I think we paid about $90 (pre-tip) between the three of us, and we took about half of the food home.

So now we know: order a chicken a day in advance, and order about half of what you think you want from the rest of the menu. Oh, and we need to brush up on our Spanish...

El Balconcito
658 E Godfrey Ave
Philadelphia, PA 19120
(215) 342-2340