Peruvian-Chinese Cuisine with Impeccable Vibes

The food, too, does some artful recontextualizing. Kam lu wantan, for instance, is a classic chifa dish of deep-fried wontons that are tossed in a sweet-and-sour sauce with meat and vegetables. At Johnny’s, they arrive with all of the typical parts in a totally different order. There is meat only inside the dumplings, which are still deep-fried (maybe a smidge overly so), rather modishly presented atop a swoop of the sauce, and garnished with jaunty little rings of red chile. Lomo saltado, a uniquely Peruvian steak stir-fry, which traditionally comes with French fries, is plated with the fries hidden beneath tender meat and onions, soaking up all the flavorful drippings and making an accompanying portion of fluffy white rice seem nearly unnecessary. Traditionally, tomatoes are sautéed in a wok with the beef and onions, their flavor deepening and softening. Here, big, bright wedges of tomato are only barely cooked; balancing on top of the meat, they provide a vibrant, acidic oomph.

But we’re here for the chicken. A few dozen birds are visible, through a plateglass window to the kitchen, slowly revolving on horizontal rails before a charcoal flame. There’s no hypnosis quite like the ever-spinning dance of the rotisserie: legs up, legs down, the imperceptibly gradual bronzing of the skin, the tantalizing release of molten fat. Stephanie Tang told me that her relatives have settled on about three pounds as the ideal size for a specimen: any larger, and the ratio of char to meat gets out of whack; any smaller, and it runs the risk of drying out as it cooks. At Johnny’s, as at many of the family’s restaurants, the kitchen uses an essentially unchanged version of her grandfather’s marinade. It’s mild, with a hint of cumin and a flutter of garlic, perhaps so as not to overpower the other star of the show: aji verde. By the end of a meal at Johnny’s your table will be littered with little metal cups of the stuff. It also comes with the ribs; with the starchy yucca fries and the sweet, golden tostones; and with the creamy, chickeny croquettes that make an ideal start to the meal. (I’m really just so happy to see croquettes showing up more and more on menus—they’re the perfect little bite, and such a pleasing outlet for food scraps. It’s a shame that Americans haven’t made them as ubiquitous an appetizer as sliders or mozzarella sticks.)