South Africa Meets South Asia at Peri Peri Grill House

Lived and worked in South Africa for seven years. During this time the locals told me that Nando’s was Portuguese for half-cooked bloody chicken. There was a Nando’s right up the street, walking distance from my house in Joburg and I always told them to cook mine very well done. After several months of going to this particular Nando’s all the wait staff knew me and knew exactly how I wanted my chicken prepared. And I’ve never eaten at another Nando’s since leaving South Africa in 2016. Shout out to Nando’s 7th Ave. Parktown North, Johannesburg.

We visited our son in a township while he was in the peace corp in Northeast South Africa. One day, lunch was open grilled chicken with peri-peri sauce and it was amazing. I tried doing back in the US and, to be honest, wss not as good. I cherish the memory of that lunch with many local people he worked with. I hope this place can make it as well. I still have 2 jars of the peppers, but no sauce.

@ Suzanne Fass Upper Upper Manhattan June 28 "I look forward to eating lamb chops and chicken wings there, holding them with my hands and then licking my fingers (here's looking at you, Tuv Wxyz ;-) )" Yes, I read you loud and clear!

May all the international chicken lovers enjoy the recipes of the endless varieties of this bird, but I think that the Food Section Writers are neglecting their duty to educate the readers' tastes by focussing exclusively on plain chicken.

Piri-piri, more widely known in Africa as pili-pili (so many of the continent's languages do not distinguish between the two sounds), is actually ubiquitous throughout all of the west, central and southern parts of the continent -- pretty much everywhere between Senegal and Mozambique, not just in the southern parts. Chili peppers spread like lightning everywhere from South America to southern Asia and beyond once the trade routes were established by the Portuguese. In Congo, a dish of chopped pili-pili arrives on the table unbidden in almost every restaurant, from the finest to the most modest. Only east and east-central Africa (from the southern Ethiopia border southwards) seem relatively immune -- you get bottled. nondescript "hot sauce" instead, except of course in the many South Asian restaurants. And the Swahili coast, with its Indian-Ocen flavors, is of course also its own thing. Nando's actually pulled out of Kenya for lack of clientele. Ethiopia has probably the continent's largest variety of capsicums, but, interestingly, the red pili-pili pepper is not among them. The Nando's chain is Portuguese in origin, not indigenously South African (whatever that means). I believe the founders migrated, with their sauce, from Mozambique. Their outlet in Bethesda, MD, is hugely successful, though I found everything a bit blander, including the chicken meat itself, than what you get at the ubiquitous Nando's franchises throughout South Africa and its neighbors.

I love how this article comes on the heels of the article posted the other day about the vices of blackened grilled meat!

Once, in a remote geological past, South Africa, parts of SE Asia, and Sluth America, made one continent. Time has come, for the descendants to reunite their cuisines.

So many cities in the US now have Nando's knock-offs (though this seems like the best of the bunch and lamb chops sound delicious). Strange that Nando's hasn't recognized the opportunity to expand beyond DC and Chicago.

Too bad they burned the lamb chops. Bad PR. Still the chicken looked savory and the prices are the real deal.

Google says there are branches on Nando's in Chicago and the Washington, DC area -- a bit far from NYC -- and I haven't seen their bottled sauce here in many years, so this sounds like a great alternative. I look forward to eating lamb chops and chicken wings there, holding them with my hands and then licking my fingers (here's looking at you, Tuv Wxyz ;-) ) But I do have to say that if the smoke is billowing into the dining room, they need to upgrade their DoH- and FDNY-required kitchen ventilation system.