Casa Adela and Her Roast Chicken Recipe
The quest to preserve Nuyorican culture with food
Above photo: A photo of a young Adela
I went to Casa Adela in 2018. I was in town for the Puerto Rican Christmas Dinner at the James Beard House. It was a year after she had already passed. I ate at Casa Adela for two consecutive nights. I went to Casa Adela in 2019. I was in town to cook for the wrap party of the West Side Story remake, a job that Jose Andres got me. I ate at Casa Adela for two consecutive nights. I ate at other places while I was in town, but there was no food or place that was more comforting than her restaurant.
How Casa Adela isn’t on New York' City’s Historic National Register is a fucking travesty and definitely one of the things Nuyoricans and the diaspora should be fighting for. I know, we’re fighting for so much other shit at the moment. I’m tired, you’re tired. But, this is definitely the time that the city will listen and possibly heed the demand to preserve this restaurant for future generations.
You can still see all past stories on my portfolio where I store clips.
https://eatgordaeat.blogspot.com/
From Cocina Boricua column, original date: May 21, 2018
I suppose her story wasn’t important enough to reach the news feeds of the masses. I suppose I should be thankful that I only found out six days after. I suppose if I didn’t constantly seek out the gente in an effort to show love, support and the occasional monetary contribution, I may have never found out. Another Puerto Rican culinary legend has left a hole in the bicultural paradox of the diaspora’s need to feel connected in our world of ni de aqui, ni de alla — not from here, not from there.
In January 2018, Puerto Ricans lost a culinary heavyweight. We lost Adela Fargas of Casa Adela in New York’s Lower East Side. She was our Sylvia Woods. Our Leah Chase.
It was a loss that came on the heels of another fallen titan a few years earlier. In 2016, Alfredo Ayala — the godfather of Puerto Rican cuisine — also died without much fanfare. Considering Ayala was said to have taught Eric Ripert a thing or two, you’d think mainland food periodicals would have dedicated at least a paragraph to Ayala’s passing.
Why is this more important than just a handful of remembrance articles written during the month of Adela’s passing? Because what Adela represented to the Nuyorican community, the diaspora, and Puerto Ricans all together, is disappearing — not just here in America, but on the island as well. These days, you’d be hard pressed to track down mondongo — a tripe soup — at many of the restaurants in Puerto Rico.
As the people on the island are losing their homes, their basic creature comforts and their lives, we’re also losing history. At a time when the island’s future seems to be at the hands of cryptocurrency millionaires, now is the time to protect and preserve. That’s why it’s now time to tell these stories, and save these recipes.
The story of Adela begins in Carolina, Puerto Rico. Like many Puerto Ricans born in the campo (boondocks) or born before the 1950s, birth dates and timelines are a blurred suggestion. Hospitals weren’t nearby, new mothers were too busy or tired to care about official paperwork, so these things often took months to register. Based on Adela’s obituary, we know that she was born around 1936. Her mother worked in a bra factory in Canales, Puerto Rico, where Adela would later work part-time as a seamstress. But, when the factory laid them off, she began to work alongside her mother doing catering and selling premade lunches to factory workers. (This is where Adela not just learned a lot about cooking, but cooking for a crowd.)
Adela moved to the United States in 1975, which would have made her around 39 years old. She came to the States for a better job and eventually found herself working as a cook on the Lower East Side at a time when the neighborhood was predominately Puerto Rican. When her employer shut its doors, Adela hustled in la calle, selling Puerto Rican street snacks to the community.
One day Adela received a call from a friend whose husband had just died. Her late husband was the main cook at his family’s restaurant and the widow asked Adela to take it over. She accepted. Adela found herself in much company with several other Puerto Rican eateries in the neighborhood (which today have rapidly disappeared due to “neighborhood shifts”), but Casa Adela cooked their food to order in a cuchifrito-land of heat lamp and steam-table-speed service.
Her restaurant started as a humble hole-in-the-wall, but over time, the original building that housed it was condemned and gutted due to substandard conditions. Fortunately, the Department of Housing Preservation and the Urban Homestead Program gave tenants the option of returning as a Housing Development Fund Corporation Co-op that would build out their own units. So that’s what Adela did.
Much like the coffee shops of North Beach in San Francisco that served as havens for the beatniks once upon a time, Casa Adela served as a muse, a community meeting center and a low-cost meal provider for Nuyorican poets, including Tato Laviera.
Laviera even immortalized Adela’s mondongo in one of his poems, titled “Criollo Story.” In it, he describes the smells, tastes, ingredients of Adela’s mondongo as the cure-all to his cruda (hangover):
“… we walked into adela’s five-thirty morning mountain smell of madrugada simmering concrete puerto rican new york radio JIT cuatro-music, recordando a borinquen songs made famous by don santiago grevi and the crushed plantains bollitos rounded boricua matzo all around cleaned vinaigrette tripe and patties de credo pig feet, softened to a melted overblown delicacy, brother, and i tell you that down went to russian vodka the alcohol disappeared with bites of calabaza-pumpkin pieces and the one hundred proof bacardi was choked by un canto de yautia tubers that were rooting the european dry red wine into total decolonization and the broth, brother, EL CALDO condimented garlic onions peppered with whole tomatoes that were melted by the low heat, see caldo was woefully seducing the jamaican liquors into compatibility, and down went the BORRACHERA, bro, and without talking, i looked across to tyrone’s second plate, i thanked my brother with a smile, as we kissed adela, and what the hell we took the number six into orchard beach, on section three, and we blew the sun as we had serenaded the moon.”
In the almost folkloric work ethic of our Puerto Rican abuelas from Adela’s generation, it was nothing for Adela to awaken at the crack of dawn to head to the restaurant. She’d start the day cooking her pernil, a large pork shoulder that is slow roasted until the skin is thin and crispy and reflects light like nontempered glass. The meat becomes spoon-tender.
But it was her roasted chicken for which she became famous. Patrons would drop in after work and purchase her chicken, just like countless Americans now buy a supermarket rotisserie chicken on their way home.
I’d like to think roast chicken is on most people’s weekly menus, either as a lazy midweek recipe or a dedicated Sunday roast. But such recipes are always just suggestions. They leave so much room for interpretation: citrus, herbs, aromatics. So when someone is known for their roasted chicken, you know this dish has to be something magical.
Adela’s beloved whole roasted chicken recipe wasn’t traditional to Puerto Rico. There’s a rumor that the rub came from a Peruano employee, but most of the seasonings are commonly found in traditional Puerto Rican recipes: vinegar, garlic, oregano, achiote, cumin. The chicken would spend the day on a vintage rotisserie that auto-turned the chicken until it was plump, juicy and glowing.
And so, Adela would spend the day cooking, keeping a watchful eye on the community until she called it a night around 11 o’clock. Many said this is how she spent her life right up until her passing, with a restless affection for her craft and her gente.
Above photo: Adela’s daughter-in-law when I went back in 2019.
Adela’s son and daughter will keep the doors open and the restaurant unchanged. Josefina Perez, who has worked alongside Adela for 22 years, will now run the kitchen. Adela was buried in her hometown of Carolina.
And so another Puerto Rican culinary legend has left a hole in the bicultural paradox of the diaspora’s need to feel connected in our world of ni de aqui, ni de alla. Not from here, not from there.
I hope their stories and recipes help the diaspora preserve the culture for future generations.
You can still see all past stories on my portfolio where I store clips.
https://eatgordaeat.blogspot.com/
Puerto Rican Roasted Chicken: Adela’s Homage
Serves 4 to 6
5 garlic cloves, finely chopped
Kosher salt, to taste
1 tablespoon ground annatto
1 tablespoon paprika
2 teaspoons ground cumin
Pinch of black pepper, or to taste
1 teaspoon dried oregano
1 tablespoon olive oil, plus more if needed
1 tablespoon white vinegar
Juice of 1 large lemon
1 whole chicken (under 5 pounds)
1 medium onion, cut in half
In a mortar, mash garlic with a pinch of salt until a paste forms. Add ground annatto, paprika, cumin, pepper, oregano and oil and mix together.
In a separate bowl, combine vinegar and half the lemon juice. Add this to the garlic-spice mixture and rub on the chicken, ensuring you also rub marinade under the skin. Pour the rest of the lemon juice into the cavity and place the onion halves in the cavity. Tuck wings underneath the bird.
Let stand for at least an hour. (You can also let the chicken marinate overnight. Allow the chicken to sit at room temperature for at least 30 minutes before roasting.)
Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Season the chicken with salt. Roast chicken for 30 minutes, then baste with pan juices. (If no pan juices have accumulated at this point, baste the skin with a bit more olive oil.) Continue roasting the chicken, basting every 30 minutes, until its juices run clear and a thermometer inserted into the thigh reaches 160 degrees. (Depending on the size of the chicken, this will take 60 to 90 minutes.)
Let rest for at least 10 minutes.
You can still see all past stories on my portfolio where I store clips.
One of my favs! Thank you for celebrating our food history so relentlessly. I love you! ♥️