Where to find the best fried chicken and lomo saltado in LA

On a Saturday night, the parking lot at Loli Farms in Pasadena is a maze of cars. People park three times at the entrance to the former gas station. Someone is blocking one of the entrances. Cars remain unmanned, hazard lights flashing, as their owners rush in to pick up food orders. Others simply lock their doors, go inside, and pray that they'll finish cleaning their chicken bones before the people they're locked up with are locked up. The chicken here is worth the risk.

The restaurant is a temple to pollo a la brasa, the fried chicken found in pollerías throughout Peru. Pollo a la Brasa was the king of the genre in Los Angeles for decades. The parking lot at the corner of Western Avenue and 8th Street in Koreatown is equally hellish. Maybe even more. And the dining room is sometimes so full of smoke that your eyes burn. But people come in droves. Tourists, police officers, students, and your great aunt who lives in Hancock Park and heard that Nancy Silverton is a fan.

Loli Farms might be even better. The ventilation system is more efficient. And the chicken is much more consistent.

Owners Sandra Loli and Mauricio Vincenzi met while working together at a Peruvian restaurant in Glendale. Vincenzi, a pastry chef from Argentina who trained in Peru, and Loli, a chef from Lima, co-opened the Peruvian restaurant Bodegon 69 in Old Pasadena in 2021. The menu pays homage to the most famous Peruvian dishes, with large platters of ceviche and tiradito, saltados and rice with chicken, beef and seafood. But no pollo a la brasa.

The chickens require a wood-fired oven, but the permitting process for installing the oven, which Loli and Vincenzi sourced from Italy, proved too difficult for the restaurant. They decided to save it for a pollería and opened Loli Farms at the end of 2024.

The oven is the heart of the restaurant; it burns at around 300 degrees Celsius and there is a mountain of wood piled nearby. The chickens slowly turn around as glowing flames touch their skin. The spits are tightly packed and constantly rotating, producing 48 chickens every hour.

An intense, carnal desire hits mid-bite into a Loli Farms chicken drumstick. I inhale the smoke rising from the skin, a heady, sweet and earthy blend of pecan, apple and almond woods. The browned skin is sticky with the bird's own fat and sugar and beautifully caramelized along every edge. My lips and fingertips glisten before I finish digging up the bones.

Loli brines the chickens overnight and then marinates them in a mixture of cumin, garlic, paprika and panca chiles from Peru for two days. Your chicken hums with a gentle hint of smoke and a complex, fruity chili flavor that's warm, round and extremely addictive. I've watched people of all ages and sizes rest their elbows on a table and carve up a whole chicken themselves, only to stop to reach for the two squeeze bottles of conditions.

One is aji verde, a fiery, electric green sauce made from Peruvian yellow peppers, and huacatay, a sharp black mint with hints of tarragon and citrus. It burns with sharp, instantaneous heat. The other is Aji Amarillo, a creamier, milder, light yellow sauce with the scent of oregano and garlic.

Loli and Vincenzi wanted the restaurant to celebrate Peruvian culture, and most of the dining room is dedicated to a superette filled with shiny packets of candy, whole dried white potatoes, ground aji amarillo, and plantain chips. In a cooler against the east wall are dozens of cans and bottles of Inca Kola, the neon yellow carbonated drink that actually outsells Coca-Cola in Peru. Imagine Redbull with Dubble Bubble. If you're watching your sugar, there's a diet, but the signature, cloying, herbal sweetness remains, without the calories.

Vincenzi uses the giant purple corn kernels known as maiz morado to make chicha morada, a warm spiced drink made from corn, pineapple, cinnamon and cloves that is native to the Andean regions.

Large white kernels, or choclo, are cooked and served with spicy goat cheese slices, served as one of about a dozen accompaniments to your chicken.

The slaw tastes sweet, like Kentucky Fried Chicken, before it is chopped into small squares of cabbage and carrots. This comparison should be read as the highest compliment. The same goes for the mashed potatoes, which have the same consistent, smooth consistency that Colonel Sanders' potatoes are known for. Only at Loli Farms is there a ladle full of chicken fat instead of sauce to top it off.

The Yucca Frita are crispy, golden tiles with fluffy, almost cheesy cassava seeds. The sweet potato fries can sometimes be limp, but the regular fries are reliably crispy and flavorful. They serve as the base for salchipapas, a street food common throughout South America that originated in Lima in the 1950s. At Loli Farms, the fries are barely visible beneath overlapping zigzag strips of mustard, ketchup and mayonnaise and coins of fried beef sausage.

Easily distracted by the rotating chickens, it took a handful of visits before I even noticed the Sanguche portion of the menu. The sandwiches are served on crusty rolls that fold into Milanese beef chops, shredded chicken or lomo saltado. The latter is a source of national pride in Peru and one of the best-known expressions of how Andean ingredients fused with Cantonese stir-fry techniques introduced by the country's Chinese immigrants. Beef strips are cooked in a piping hot wok with cherry tomatoes, onions and chips, then seasoned with soy sauce and black pepper. It makes a great sandwich filling and is served with a cup of beef broth with vinegar, hoisin sauce and cumin for dipping.

Right now, dessert consists of any packaged, chocolate-covered cookie you see at the market and a small box of Alfajores, a shortbread and dulce de leche sandwich cookie that Vincenzi bakes for the restaurant. He soon plans to expand his baking offerings to include sweet breads as well as various jellies and jams.

At the moment there is enough to justify my weekly visits. Remember to ask for extra sauce and park on the street.