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Part I can be found here.

By Ezio Neyra
Translated by Diana P. Olano

As the legend goes (that is, this is how historian Eloy Jáuregui tells it, although Roger’s son Johnny, swears it’s unlikely), one Sunday afternoon, Schuler and a friend (a Swiss names Mario Bertoli Demarchi) discovered that a farmer from Santa Clara skewered chicks with a large iron bar and manually turned the bar over flames. Said machine, designed by the Greeks, was known as “rotombo” in these parts. It was then that a light bulb went off in Schuler’s head—according to Jáuregui—and asked his friend Franz Ulrich to design a machine that improved on the virtues of the rotombo.

Well, we know that necessity is the mother of invention and legends aside, what is certain is that in 1946, Roger Schuler established a chicken farm in his house with the intention to sell them in his Miraflores and Lince stores. He called them Productos Avícolas de La Granja Azul.

One time in February of 1950, there were problems with the business and there were a large number of chickens that weren’t sold. Schuler talked with Ulrich, a mechanic, and between the two, they built a motored, chained machine which allowed them to cook a large amount of chickens at the same time; a system called “planetario”. He then put a sign up in full view of the Central Railway claiming “Eat all the chicken you can for 5 soles!” and improvised a restaurant in his own house, to serve chicken cooked by this strange machine. There were no more than four tables between the living and dining rooms.

Schuler himself was the cook, waiter and manager of the makeshift restaurant, with his wife, Doña Rosita, as the cashier who also prepared the desserts. The farm workers shared the work of bartenders and busboys.

Sometime after this pioneer restaurant was established in Santa Clara, another Swiss with the name of Steinmann inaugurated a locale closer to Metropolis Lima. It was baptized in 1957 as “El Rancho” and Ulrich’s same machine was installed there.

Schuler’s pollos a la brasa were such a hit that today, La Granja Azul, can accommodate 450 comensales at the same time and naturally, “all the chicken you eat” will cost you 55 soles. Two kilometers behind, another one of Roger’s sons, Jimmy, opened a restaurant a few years ago called El Pillo, where this national culinary specialty is also served.

John Wayne’s recipe

And that was how Schuler and Steinmann made this part of our “cultural heritage of the nation” popular. It was during the 70’s that pollerias in Lima became widespread. This pollero boom—not just in restaurants, but also with the bird breeders—perhaps came to be because during those years, we were used to eating hen, which was Sunday-outing dish, costly and not always available back then.

Aside from La Granja Azul y El Rancho, there were other well-known Lima restaurants in the 70’s that served pollo a la brasa, such as “El Cortijo”, “La Macarena”, “El Supergordo” and “La Carreta”. They, however, weren’t enough to keep up with the demand that only kept on growing. This is why in 1966, Carlos Meza opened “La Caravana” in Pueblo Libre, directly on Sucre Avenue. During that time, westerns were popular, so figures like John Wayne became Meza’s idol, who also cooked his meals by turning them on skewers over open flames.

With westerns in mind, Meza thought from the beginning to baptize his restaurant as “La Diligencia”, but in the end, under the advice of a family member, he named it “La Caravana”. He also solicited the recipe for the chicken’s seasoning from his mother: a secret récipe that Meza and his sons selfishly keep to themselves. On the other hand, while every polleria used criolla lettuce for the salad that accompanied the chicken, Meza choose to use American lettuce and also added slices of tomatoes.

Also, going against the tradition of serving the chicken and fries in a wicker basket covered with wax paper, and with a small cup of water with lemon to clean your hands with, Meza served his chicken with forks, plates and clear serving platters. With time, the restaurant located in Pueblo Libre attracted people from all over the city, including more well-known diners such as Luis Alberto Sanchez, who, ’til he was an old man and practically blind, would come to the restaurant accompanied by a women who would guide him to a table, where he would eat in a hidden booth and in silence.

The machine, like almost everything, was a Greek invention. And it was Swiss, Schulet and Ulrich, who perfected the inventions in these lands and made it a vital key in a very profitable business. However, without a doubt, pollo a la brasa is a symbol of our national identity on our table thanks to the devotion it inspires all over. Someone once said that a neighborhood without a polleria wasn’t wa neighborhood. And for it’s fans, a Peruvian restaurant in the U.S. or in Japan that doesn’t serve pollo a la brasa isn’t a Peruvian restaurant.