Helen Rosner reviews Johnny’s, a Peruvian-Cantonese restaurant in East Williamsburg that specializes in chifa, particularly rotisserie chicken.
Why not, indeed? Chifa isn’t fancy-schmancy, but there’s no reason that a golden half chicken or melty-tender, vinegar-basted spareribs don’t deserve an elevated treatment. The room is spacious and high-ceilinged, with broad windows that let in the winking lights of traffic on the nearby B.
Q.E. There’s a wooden banquette running along the perimeter, and tables are placed tight enough that you could be inspired to order the jalea by the sight of it on your neighbor’s table, but with more than enough room for the restaurant to add a few more tables as demand grows. A sleek, arch-backed bar, built into the center of the room, provides a focal point: a fluffy llama figurine gazing down from a high shelf, a pair of slushy machines on the countertop ever-churning. One is a frozen Pisco Sour zhuzhed up with lychee; the other, a hazy flower-petal magenta, is chicha morada, a drink made from purple corn spiced with cinnamon and cloves. The food, too, does some artful recontextualizing. Kam lu wantan, for instance, is a classic chifa dish of deep-fried wontons that are tossed in a sweet-and-sour sauce with meat and vegetables. At Johnny’s, they arrive with all of the typical parts in a totally different order. There is meat only inside the dumplings, which are still deep-fried , rather modishly presented atop a swoop of the sauce, and garnished with jaunty little rings of red chile. Lomo saltado, a uniquely Peruvian steak stir-fry, which traditionally comes with French fries, is plated with the fries hidden beneath tender meat and onions, soaking up all the flavorful drippings and making an accompanying portion of fluffy white rice seem nearly unnecessary. Traditionally, tomatoes are sautéed in a wok with the beef and onions, their flavor deepening and softening. Here, big, bright wedges of tomato are only barely cooked; balancing on top of the meat, they provide a vibrant, acidic oomph. But we’re here for the chicken. A few dozen birds are visible, through a plateglass window to the kitchen, slowly revolving on horizontal rails before a charcoal flame. There’s no hypnosis quite like the ever-spinning dance of the rotisserie: legs up, legs down, the imperceptibly gradual bronzing of the skin, the tantalizing release of molten fat. Stephanie Tang told me that her relatives have settled on about three pounds as the ideal size for a specimen: any larger, and the ratio of char to meat gets out of whack; any smaller, and it runs the risk of drying out as it cooks. At Johnny’s, as at many of the family’s restaurants, the kitchen uses an essentially unchanged version of her grandfather’s marinade. It’s mild, with a hint of cumin and a flutter of garlic, perhaps so as not to overpower the other star of the show: aji verde. By the end of a meal at Johnny’s your table will be littered with little metal cups of the stuff. It also comes with the ribs; with the starchy yucca fries and the sweet, golden tostones; and with the creamy, chickeny croquettes that make an ideal start to the meal. No restaurant is flawless, but Johnny’s comes awfully close. It’s warm and easy. The food is intelligent and reliable. The portions are enormous. The prices are awfully reasonable: everything on the menu is under thirty dollars, and a quarter chicken combo, which comes with a heap of bright-tasting vegetable fried rice and a crisp side salad, is a respectable nineteen dollars. Though a decent number of seats seem to be filled by trend-seeking restaurant-goers and trans-borough gastronauts, the place has the unmistakable aura of a true neighborhood spot; if I lived closer, I think I’d be there all the time. It feels comfortable, personal, a meal informed by the Tang siblings’ family history, sure, but also by their own interests and quirks. A sesame-enriched Caesar salad is crunchified with crushed saltines. Cans of fizzy yerba maté come from the indie Hong Kong soda company Mezzanine Makers, and boozy beverages are impishly garnished with cocktail umbrellas. There’s only one dessert on the menu, a gooey-centered skillet cookie, crowned with a scoop of ice cream and drizzles of black-sesame caramel and dulce de leche. When I asked Stephanie Tang if that, too, was drawn from the chifa repertoire, she laughed and said, “Honestly, I just really love a chocolate-chip cookie.” ♦
Brooklyn Chicken Chinese Food Peru
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