May 13--UPDATE: Nando's West Loop location, 945 W. Randolph St., will open next Wednesday.
I've only peripherally heard of peri peri chicken, and didn't taste my first until two months ago during a trip to Montreal. Turns out it's a huge deal there. You can walk down the street and see store after store of spinning rotisseries and open-fire grills filled with spatchcock chicken. The cooks slather it with a spicy-looking orange oil, flecked with unnamed spices, and then it's served hot, quartered and glistening.
It's impossible to describe its taste in one pithy sentence. The one at Rotisserie Romados, perhaps Montreal's most beloved peri peri chicken, had the nuttiness of cumin, the char from the grill, the acid of lemon, garlic, peppers, a gentle smoked sweetness (paprika?) and a boatload of savoriness.
Just this week, The Chicago Reader wrote about peri peri chicken being perhaps the next front in Chicago's chicken advance. Fat Rice, writer Mike Sula reports, will soon do takeout versions of its excellent peri peri chicken. Sula also mentions a new standalone Skokie restaurant called Fogo that specializes in it.
Now comes word that the most famous peri peri chicken chain in the world, called Nando's, will open three locations in Chicago next year.
Nando's began in South Africa in 1987 and has since grown to nearly 1,200 locations on five continents. There are currently 20 locations in the U.S., all centered around Baltimore and Washington, D.C.
Burton Heiss, CEO of Nando's American division, tells me they've chosen Chicago as the entry point in their westward expansion. Their first store will be -- where else? -- in the West Loop, a casual concept Heiss said will include "South African art," "real leather banquettes" and a "beer and wine list." The chain is aiming for a spring opening.
Two more locations on the North Side follow in the summer and fall: First in Lincoln Park in the yet-to-be-built New City development on Clybourn, and then one in Lakeview.
kpang@tribpub.com
Twitter @pang
