Justin Fox Burks
When Joe Spotts and Joseph Soliman lived in Ecuador, they operated a weekly pop-up restaurant in their sprawling two-floor apartment, serving more than 100 customers every Saturday night. Although the menu routinely changed, fried chicken earned a permanent monthly rotation. Lucky for us, the chefs have opened a restaurant in the former Farmer space, serving fried chicken with roasted chili gravy that is — here goes — better than Gus’s. “In Ecuador, our guests said our fried chicken had flavor to the bone, and it really does,” Spotts says, crediting Soliman for the recipe, which includes 16 secret seasonings. “Joseph won’t even tell me what the spices are,” Spotts says, but he will share this: Chicken is marinated for 24 hours and cooked in a blend of peanut and vegetable oil.
Contender: Grasshopper Pie
