Coconut cream, horchata and agua de limón are all splendid drinks.
I’m drinking an horchata that’s so good it makes me sip and question if it’s really the best I’ve had.
Does that really matter? No. What’s more important is trying to show restraint and ration it to last through my meal. I’m at Pichi Pollo, what’s for now a food truck parked just outside the physical location that Ozzie Gutierrez and his dad, who goes by the more formal Oswaldo, are renovating to become a sit-down eatery. The spot, just south of Fillmore Street on Nevada Avenue, was formerly a liquor store, so it has a ways to go to get up to food-service code.
2831 N. Nevada Ave., 719-259-8927, pichipollo.com
10 a.m. to 8 p.m., Tuesday-Saturday
But anyway, back to that horchata, I’m kinda obsessed. So I later call Ozzie for more details on it and quickly learn what I suspected, which is that housemade makes all the difference compared to all the cloying concentrates served commercially at many places — the ones that have synthetic flavorings that make me think of perfume and cleaning products. Not here. Instead, they soak rice for 24 to 48 hours with whole cinnamon sticks in water before blending that down and straining it, then adding evaporated milk for sweetness instead of sugar. Bonus: That lends creaminess lacking in leaner versions while also hitting a nice sweet balance to counter the strong cinnamon bite.
If you’ve guessed it based on horchata being a favorite Mexican beverage and pollo being Spanish for chicken, yes, Pichi Pollo indeed operates as a Mexican food cart. They specialize in rotisserie chickens and fresh-shaved pastor, but also serve seared asada and chorizo. All of those show up in various forms in between tacos, all-day breakfast burritos, quesadillas and combo platter offerings. And all of it’s pretty damn good when paired with kick-ass charro beans, Mexican rice and a trio of sauces: salsa rojo and verde plus a serrano-tomato blend made special for the chicken.
But wait, I’m actually not done mooning over the drinks. Equally creamy and divine is Pichi’s coconut cream, a mix of evaporated and sweetened condensed milks plus canned coconut milk blended with water and fine coconut flakes, resulting in a velvety, coconut-flavor-rich sipper. We’re inspired to play with second orders of this and the horchata at home later by adding añejo and/or mezcal. Mezcal and horchata sips like a smoky coquito, while the coconut drink with tequila made us think of a Mexican version of an Irish cream. The coconut cream’s rarely seen in the States and special to the city of León, in the central state of Guanajuato. Ozzie, 24, says his family hails from there, and though he was born and raised here, he spent part of ages 12 through 14 in León doing a full immersion to learn Spanish.
The final drink, also super popular in León, he says, is an agua de limón, an agua fresca made with hand-squeezed limes and sugar, but also chia seeds, that sink and sit at the cup’s bottom awaiting a straw suck or concluding shot down the throat with the sour-sweet dregs. This drink of course offers more acidic offset to the food than the creamy options; you could consider one for food pairing, the other for dessert, unless you require the milkiness to cool down any spiciness.
Coconut cream, horchata and agua de limón are all splendid drinks.
On that note, nothing really is too spicy. Ozzie, who takes manager, chef and co-owner titles, preps the sauces daily without any agenda to scorch palates. The serrano-tomato sauce is literally just those two ingredients, fresh, with salt and water, ground together (not fully blended) with a raw vegetal essence in mind. The salsa rojo starts with chiles de árbol, which they cook dried, blackening the peppers’ skins before rehydrating them in a blender with tomatillos, garlic and cilantro. It’s biting and piquant, with mildly building heat. The salsa verde gets the same treatment, sub serrano peppers for the chiles de árbol and add a little onions in. It’s tart and bright.
Now to what soaks up all those sauces, the meats of the matter: The pastor spins on the trompo (kebab/shawarma machine) within eyesight of the order window, with a whole pineapple capping layers of pork shoulder, bacon and onions, so when Ozzie slices down the vertical spit, little chunks of each fall into awaiting homemade corn tortillas. The bacon keeps the whole mass greased and hydrated, and everything has marinated together for a day to absorb the spices, which include garlic and mostly guajillo peppers, but also a moderate amount of ancho chiles for intended smokiness. I get a pastor taco in a mixed trio, enjoying the zinging pops of sweetness amidst the earthy porkiness.
I also get the chorizo and asada tacos in that mix. The chorizo’s one of the sole store-bought items on the truck, though they plan to make their own down the road, likely sometime after they’ve finished renovating the sit-down dining area. This chorizo’s serviceable but not remarkable, lightly peppery. The asada’s a little different than expected, lacking the typical char flavor, because currently on the truck they aren’t grilling it for direct flame exposure. Again, later, this preparation will change, so for now expect seared strips of outside skirt steak that have stylistically been shaved super thin and marinated to the family preference, which is lightly with salt, garlic and lime and pineapple juices. Comparatively, this indeed makes for subtle spicing, but the meat’s nice and juicy.
Which brings us to the headlining pollo. The family drove down to the Mexican border to pick up a custom-made rotisserie spit to install in the truck. Oswaldo is a contractor, so the build-out needs of the truck (and brick-and-mortar) fall cleanly inside his wheelhouse. The birds — sold in quarter, half and whole options — start with the same marinade as the pastor, also sitting for a day before taking their turn on the fiery Ferris wheel to spin for a few hours over charcoal and mesquite. Their skins gain ideal blackening and crispness while managing to hold in ample moisture; the pulled meat’s tender and especially delightful with the serrano-tomato sauce. But the chicken’s best in concert with bites of the rice and charro beans. They toast the rice in oil before cooking it with corn bits and tomato consommé; it’s not dry and boring. The pinto beans cook with chorizo, ham and bacon for big meaty flavor, assisted by garlic and cilantro sharpness; again it’s not a side-dish afterthought.
To try a couple other platings of the meats, we also get a chicken quesadilla and a pastor breakfast burrito. On both, the flour tortillas stand out. They’re the second item store-bought (at Carniceria Leonela), but what makes them special is that they’re raw dough until thrown onto the flat top, on-truck. They bring a noticeable fresh edge compared to the average lame supermarket wrapper. They have that tortilla smell, too, that encourages you to hold them under your nose before you dive in. The tortillas toast up nicely to make browned air bubbles on the cracker-y quesadilla, which is everything you desire in one in terms of cheesy richness for an adult kid’s meal. And the tortillas hold a nice stretchy/starchy texture when cooked up just enough to fold around a hearty portion of the chewy pork mixed with beans, cheese and scrambled egg bits for the filling burrito.
Before we’re done talking, I ask Ozzie about the business’ name, and he says it’s a tribute to his grandfather, from whom he gets his middle name, Felix. Pichi was his nickname. He passed away last year. As much as this effort honors him, it’s actually more about Oswaldo’s dreams, Ozzie tells me. Oswaldo dropped out of middle school, he says, but was always an amazing cook. He ran a hot dog stand outside his house back home at age 15, and always dreamed of running a real restaurant someday. He met Ozzie’s mom in a bar in Guanajuato when she was studying abroad in college; she later taught Spanish here. Oswaldo bartended both in Mexico and the States, but ended up in the construction industry for the past 20-plus years.
With Pichi Pollo, he’s finally realizing his dream, somewhat vicariously at the moment, through Ozzie at the kitchen helm. The recipes are mostly Oswaldo’s, recently revisited with Ozzie’s input. When I briefly meet Oswaldo at the truck, he tells me he’d like to do a few locations and franchise. When I run that back by Ozzie, he’s on a string of 16-hour work days inside the business’ opening weeks and says that may be getting a little far ahead, that he needs to put all his efforts here at the moment.
Well, I can say in the early days that it certainly shows that he’s giving it his all and doing his dad proud. At least that’s what it tastes like. The pastor/rotisserie chicken headliner concept thus far seems solid. But if they do ever go big, it might just be the stellar house drinks leading the way, especially that horchata.
Matthew Schniper is the Food and Drink Editor at the Colorado Springs Indy. He began freelancing with the Indy in mid-2004 and joined full-time in early 2006, contributing arts, food, environmental and feature writing.
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