Return to El Pollon
OK, so I’m officially stalking a restaurant. I’ve already made El Pollon de OKC, 2106 SW 44 St., Lunch of the Week but now I fear I’m venturing into something untoward.
El Pollon serves Peruvian cuisine, which as I’ve stated before means you won’t get chips and salsa on your table and you won’t find fajitas on the menu. Yes, you will find is what might be the best chicken in Oklahoma City, bar none. You will find skirt steak strips with fries as their version of lomo saltado. You’ll also get papas huancainas, simple boiled potatoes in a luxuriously creamy and spicy sauce. But now, I have visual evidence.
I’ve eaten at this little hole in the wall with three of the city’s finest chefs: Jonathan Stranger, Ryan Parrott and the Big Kahuna himself, Kurt Fleischfresser. This potato dish has, in each case, been a stunningly successful start to each of these meals. The sauce is somehow both bold and refined. It is a marriage of dairy and chile, or aji as they call it in Peru, that none of us have ever quite tasted. It’s fun to watch a chef’s reaction to something they find truly unique as it takes some doing.
