Great Chicken AT LAST

I bow down to Monkey and Buddha's eating powers. They will never steer Mika and I wrong. From now on, they can bring us blindfolded to a restaurant. Heck they can order for me. They are yummy grub masters!

We have had one good Brooklyn eats weekend with our friends Monkey and Buddha. The climax was our dinner at Luz Restaurant in Fort Greene. I had previously opined that's near impossible to find really good chicken in a restaurant, but I've been proven wrong! Luz is a Pan-Latin American resto that serves excellent Peruvian style rotisserie chicken. The meat is cooked to utmost tenderness and can be eased off the bone with a prod of your fork. The skin is crisp and wonderfully seasoned. The sauces that come with the chicken bring your bites to another level of gatronomic bliss. The combination of red chimichurri and spicy cilantro mint sauce brings a whole other dimension to the already flavorful chicken. It's simply addictive! At $6 for a generously cut half of a chicken, you get amazing bang for your buck at Luz. But they make it up on the sides, which I feel are a tad overpriced at $4-5, no matter how big the portion. But I will suck it up because the chicken is THAT good.

Our appetizers were equally superb. We started with a couple of delish empanadas: one with Spanish manchego-goat cheese and spinach, and another with skirt steak ropa vieja. The empanadas were served atop a fire roasted tomatoes salad, which provided a nice and fresh counterpoint to the rich flavors of the empanadas. I particularly loved the cheese empanada, since I love manchego. Mika dogged it and dropped a portion on the floor, and he seriously considered picking it up and eating it (5 second rule!). Thank god the second appetizer arrived and distracted him! The Pinchos de Res was also amazing. The chunks of filet mignon were nicely grilled to our preferred medium rare temperature, so that the meat remained tender and a little bloody (yum!). The meat is skewered onto crispy yuca and served with that addictive red chimichurri. I wasn't that into the yuca (I'm more used to the Filipino way of serving rootcrops, which is as sweets. Kamote cue ... mmm ... ) so I mostly ate just the beef with the chimichurri. Yum yum yum ...

We felt a little sad that we didn't have enough space in our tummies for the Lechon Asado and the dark rum and sugar cane glazed lamb chops that we spied on the table next to us ... so much good food, so little stomach space. We'll be back ...

Where: Luz Restaurant @ 177 Vanderbilt Ave. between Myrtle and Willoughby Avenues, Brooklyn, N.Y. 11205, Tel. 718.246.4000

P.S. I haven't had Filipino Andok's chicken in awhile, but now that I think about it, that is pretty friggin good too ... I bet it could give this Peruvian chicken a run for it's money! Hmmm ... What I wouldn't give for some good old Andok's--preferrably in Boracay! Yum ...