Setubal is host to over a dozen roast chicken specialists, four of them leading lights. All are excellent, and locals have their fierce favorites, but there's one thing everyone agrees on: never buy roast chicken at the supermarket.
You don't need to be Portuguese to know this. This is deep cultural intelligence shared in the collective unconscious of all humans. A part of our birthright as a species.
Pingo Doce is the ubiquitous chain grocer here, and it's decent though no one's idea of fancy. Especially not their prepared foods, patronized exclusively by stingy pensioners, clutching cut-out coupons and filling up for pennies. It's no place for a chowhound.
But at this one Pingo Doce (the one at Monte Bello), the chicken is improbably great. Better, even, than the leading lights.
I'm normally a blabbermouth with food tips, but I've tried to hold this one back because many people here suspect that the clueless American may actually know a thing or two about their food, and this absurdity would completely jump my shark. If he's eating roast chicken from Pingo Fricking Doce, and calling it the best in town, we obviously need to revoke his visa.
But não, people.
I have a long history of brouhahas with locals after briefly swooping into their longtime hunting grounds to insist that some blurry nothing place is great/fantastic/soulful/genius/etc. Longtime Flatbush residents still can't imagine what that idiot writer ever saw in Di Fara Pizza, which never struck any of them as heaven-sent (indeed, it was chronically deserted when I first ate there). It's a thing that happens, and it's never smooth. You'd think they'd be delighted by the tip. But não.
A few times in my life I pulled the rug out from under society en masse. For instance, I wrote in the mid-1980s about a White Castle in Astoria where the grill kid had developed a technique where he'd cook the burgers two minutes longer, until crunchy. A whole other experience! Bells and buzzers would be going off - FLIP THE MEAT! FLIP THE MEAT! - while he'd stand there steadfastly, awaiting the optimal moment.
His legend quickly grew - the customer queue was out the door - and, less than a month after he'd first appeared, he was gone. The custodians of a Machine can not; shall not; will not allow ghosts in The Machine.
Then there was the Roy Rogers on the Jersey shore where everything was eye-poppingly good. This was a bit less surreal, because Roy Rogers were pretty good to begin with. But this one was superlative.
And many food lovers remember the time I found a wonderful Thai chef hiding behind the corporate armor of a midtown Manhattan sandwich shop. Blimpie Subs & Salads, AKA Joey Thai: Thai Fast Food Restaurant was a wonder (here's my original article, scroll halfway down, explaining the grandeur, the flop sweat, the sleight of hand...everything).
Also there's my alltime favorite hustle. Want to make lots of money? Bet foodie friends they'll enjoy top-five lifetime fried chicken at a KFC, and bring them to the one in East Flatbush, Brooklyn (it's a long drive/ride, and well worth it). I've never lost the bet. KFC isn't Blimpie's or Roy Rogers or White Castle. There's wiggle room in the procedure. What's more, KFCs in black nabes get delivered spicier fixings. You don't need to ask for "spicy" (like at Popeye's), it's just automatically spicier and better. And the ebullient, friendly Caribbean workers at East Flatbush KFC know they're a centerpiece of their proud immigrant neighborhood. It's meaningful, so standards are very high (and they've mastered all the hacking options), and, to this day, I've scarcely had better fried chicken.
Cooking, like soylent green, is people. Deliciousness has nothing to do with the branding, the quality of the linen tablecloths, what you call it, or how you present it. It's a matter of talented people trying much much much much harder, working their way up the curve of declining results and obstinately refusing to shut down at "good enough". And one thing about planet Earth is that people are everywhere, and some tiny percentage of them conjure up magic, where the whole exceeds the sum of its parts.
That's how this one Pingo Doce, in a nation brimming with identical Pingo Doces, makes extraordinary roast chicken.
Cursed with self-awareness, I'm prone to self-gaslighting. Suspecting I've lost my taste (and/or mind), I devised a check. I can't help ordering other stuff to go with. Some rice, french fries, pasta salad, roast potatoes, sautéed vegetables, anything to break up the poultry monotony. And while none has been truly awful, the chicken quality ratchets my standards so high that I've never taken a second bite of any of that. It all tastes supermarket-bought, i.e. an octillion times worse than great. This, in turn, confirms the chicken's celestiality. The store's own standards reveal how vastly it excels - aw, priori.
So is the white meat consummately tender despite the golden crispiness - i.e. the standard measure of truly fancy, expert roast chicken? Nah, dude. Come on. This is supermarket chicken. But it's never dry, and will delight anyone who isn't a tight-assed dean at Le Cordon Bleu.
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