Home-style Peruvian dishes served in simple surroundings

It always seems like a good sign when people who've grown up eating a particular cuisine enjoy an ethnic restaurant, so we were heartened to enter D'Candela, a tiny storefront in Chicago's Northwest Side Irving Park neighborhood, and find a big table of Peruvian boxers from the AIBA World Boxing Championships and their managers and local guides happily chowing down and passing around a bottle of pisco, a heady Peruvian brandy.

Peruvian native Luis Garcia opened the restaurant as La Granja two years ago but recently changed the name due to a conflict with another restaurant of the same name. The menu, which originally mixed in some Mexican fare, is now entirely Peruvian.

Peruvian fare, still rather scarce in the Chicago area, can be quite sophisticated. The cuisine draws on influences from all over: Not only the original inhabitants of South America, but immigrants from Africa, Asia and several parts of Europe have contributed to the country's bill of fare. It packs less spicy heat than many other Latin American countries' cooking, and often seems more complex.

D'Candela, however, offers home-style cooking in simple surroundings (as do nearly all of Chicagoland's few Peruvian restaurants). The no-frills eatery boasts just eight booths and a few tables, and most were full the night we visited. The service was also simple and friendly. The menu, while not long, offers a good mix of representative dishes, with the top-priced seafood items running less than $15, and most entrees costing less than $10.

To start, don't miss the delicious papa a la huancaina, a boiled potato, sliced and served chilled under a blanket of smooth, spicy cheese sauce, with a garnish of diced red pepper and wedges of hard-boiled egg.

Large Peruvian-style tamales, corn dough steamed in banana leaves, contain bits of chicken, olives and nuts and come with a lively relish of sliced red onions pickled in lime juice and creamy, pale green salsa imbued with an anise-scented Peruvian herb called huacatay, or black mint.

Other starter options include tilapia ceviche; choros a la chalaca, mussels on the half shell; and anticuchos, skewers of grilled veal heart. There's also homey chicken vegetable soup.

Peruvian-style chicken, roasted slowly over charcoal, forms the centerpiece of the menu. The well-seasoned birds, their skins coated in mixed spices, come as a whole chicken, a half or a quarter, with two side dishes. Ours, alas, tasted as if it had been cooked earlier in the day, left to steam and then reheated, so although it had very good, smoky flavor, it was almost too moist and tender, with flabby rather than crisp skin. It's likely better fresh from the rotisserie.

Sides come mainly from the fryer and include maduros, fried ripe plaintains, slightly crusty and sweet; tostones, mashed green plantains, fried crisp; yuca fritas, fried cassava root, something like starchy french fries; and papas fritas, regular french fries. Pinto beans and salad form the nonfried options.

Chicken also features in other entrees, like aji de gallina, shredded chicken in walnut and yellow-chili sauce, served with boiled potatoes and rice, and pollo saltado, chicken sautéed with onions and tomatoes, served with either rice and french fries or spaghetti.

A number of beef dishes figure on the menu, including bistec apanado, the Peruvian version of what Mexicans call milanesa, or breaded fried steak, here fairly thin, tender and coated in crispy crumbs, served with rice and french fries. It benefits from a dollop of the huacatay salsa.

Arroz chaufa de carne, Peruvian-style beef fried rice, shows the Chinese influence in Peru's cuisine. There is also lomo saltado, beef sautéed with onions and tomatoes; seco de carne, a dish of dried beef and green beans with cilantro; estofado de carne, beef stew; acodero con rijoles y arroz, lamb stew with beans and rice; and cau cau, a traditional Creole stew of beef tripe, potatoes and carrots.

Seafood items include shrimp fried rice; jalea de pescado, deep-fried fish and squid topped with lime-pickled onions; sudado de filete de pescado, steamed fish with onions and tomatoes; and a nicely seasoned arroz con mariscos, a generous portion of sautéed fish, squid, mussels and clams mixed with peppers and rice.

Desserts are limited to flan, a thick rich custard well coated in caramel sauce, and alfajores, South American cookies. Unfortunately, the boxers had eaten them all, so we didn't get to taste those.

D'Candela doesn't have a liquor license. You can bring your own pisco, beer or wine or try commercial South American drinks such as bubble-gummy Inca Kola along with American and Mexican bottled sodas. Do, however, try a glass of the house-made chicha morada, a fruity, deep purple cold drink made from corn, spiced with cinnamon and garnished with bits of fresh fruit.

D'Candela

4053 N. Kedzie Ave., Chicago, (773) 478-0819

Cuisine: Peruvian

Setting: Small, no-frills storefront

Price range: Appetizers $1.85 to $14.50; entrees $5.50 to $14.50; desserts $2 to $2.50

Hours: 11:30 a.m. to 9 p.m. Sundays and Tuesdays through Thursdays; 11:30 a.m. to 9:30 p.m. Fridays and Saturdays

Accepts: Visa and Mastercard; reservations

Also: BYOB; street parking only