Friday 9 May 2014

La Panka - e.g. the BEST chicken I ever ate in MY LIFE

After a long and fruitful day at the HASTAC conference, my colleagues and I headed out into Lima for a much deserved dinner. We wanted to try some of Lima's most celebrated drinks and foods - Pisco Sours and roast chicken. While at the conference, we met a resident of Lima whose sister owns a restaurant called La Panka. Lucky for us, the restaurant was in the same neighborhood we were staying in - Miraflores.




After freshening up a bit, we headed out into the street to hail a cab. We found a very nice cabbie who offered to take us to the other end of the neighborhood at a very reasonable cost. Everything was going so smoothly...that is, until the cabbie started asking us for directions to the restaurant. We had the street address on my iPhone but nothing more to share with him. Before I knew it, he was out on the street with my iPhone in hand, waving it around wildly, while asking a police officer where the restaurant was located (He had to stop several times and ask various police officers before we actually found the "right place.") While all of this was going on, Jenny, Tina, and I decided to have a little dance party in the cab to ease the tension. At one point, the Cabbie laughed and was like, "Stand up and dance!" and he pushed the front seat forward to make room for our dance party in the back seat. We all laughed and kindly declined his generous offer to turn his cab into a itinerant discotheque. When we finally found the "right place" we were actually still about 12 blocks away from the restaurant and had to Tucan Sam-it and follow our noses to our final destination (with the help of several people on the street, of course). I'm happy to report that our little journey was so worth it! The mango Pisco Sour I had was so light and refreshing with that delicious layer of foamy egg whites on top...Yummmm.


And the chicken! Oh the chicken!!! We opted for the deep fried chicken as an appetizer. Oh. My. Word. I can confidently say that it was THE BEST CHICKEN I HAVE EVER HAD IN MY LIFE. The skin was flavorful and crispy. The chicken was perfectly cooked -- all of the juices were locked in during the deep frying process. I think they only flavored the meat with salt and pepper, but it was perfection. I don't have a picture of the main dish because it was so delicious it just disappeared off of the plate! But, I'm sure you can imagine that golden, crispy skin and succulent meat dripping with wonderful juices.

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