Temperature: Hot
Where: Cocina criolla
Price range: S/18–45
Chicken in a yellow chili cream
Ají de gallina is Peruvian comfort food at its simplest: shredded chicken in a thick sauce of ají amarillo (the yellow Peruvian chili), bread, milk, walnuts and parmesan, over white rice, with a boiled potato, a black olive and half a hard-boiled egg.
It looks plain, a yellow plate of yellow food. The sauce isn't: slightly spicy, slightly nutty, and unmistakably Lima. If you had a Peruvian grandmother, this is what she'd make on Sunday.
Mild enough for the first week
The ají amarillo brings flavor more than heat, so most people taste it as warm, not spicy. The sauce is creamy and easy on a stomach that's been eating new things for a few days.
That makes it a good second or third dish in Lima, after lomo saltado and before ceviche or anticuchos.
Gallina or pollo
Ask for "ají de gallina" and it comes assembled: rice on one side, the chicken in its sauce on the other, with the olive, egg and potato on top. "Más arroz, por favor" gets you more rice.
Two relatives you'll see on menus:
- Ají de pollo is the same dish made with pollo (ordinary chicken) instead of gallina (an older laying hen). Almost every restaurant uses pollo, whatever the menu calls it.
- Causa rellena de pollo uses a similar chicken filling, cold, layered inside causa.
It's a workhorse of the menú del día, almost always among the second-course options, so that's the cheap way to try it.
Prices
| Where | Plato (S/) |
|---|---|
| Menú del día | 15–20 |
| Standard restaurant | 25–38 |
| Upscale / criollo restaurant | 45–70 |
Everything on the same fork
Don't eat the parts separately. Rice, sauce, chicken, potato and a sliver of egg go on one fork: starchy potato, creamy sauce and firm yolk are meant to be eaten together.
Drink chicha morada or lemonade. It's heavy enough that locals usually skip the beer.
A medieval pudding, made savory
Ají de gallina descends from manjar blanco, a sweet medieval Spanish pudding of almonds and chicken that reached colonial Peru in the 16th century. Lima's cooks swapped the almonds for ground walnuts and bread, dropped the sugar, and added what grew on the coast: ají amarillo. The result was a savory, mildly spicy stew that became a pillar of criollo cooking. The name means "hen chili", after the stewed hen of the original. Most kitchens now use chicken breast because it's faster, though purists still simmer a whole bird.
Where to try it
Any decent cocina criolla restaurant makes it well. Look for it on the menú del día boards of San Borja, Lince or Magdalena, where the cooking is for locals at local prices. The classic criollo restaurants of Miraflores all serve a more polished version.