When you’re introduced to a newcomer to the current market — as I was with Galito’s, a South African import that opened its first U.S. site in Gaithersburg in April — you consider your prospects when opting for a grilled hen slathered with a sauce from the crimson-maroon conclusion of the chain’s warmth spectrum. You could easily finish up with a one-way ticket to Thermonuclear Town, no acclimatization asked for and none supplied.
But you don’t try to eat at a piri-piri joint and order the chook grilled with a lemon-and-herb sauce. It’d be like heading to KFC and asking for a pot pie. So on my initially take a look at to Galito’s, I headed straight for the pink zone. I purchased an espetada — generally a steel skewer that hangs from a hook, like a backyard resource in the lose — spiked with fat chunks of breast meat dripping with “hot” piri-piri sauce. If I was heading down with my 1st meal at Galito’s, I needed to at the very least go down with a dish that seems like anything that could place a scare on impressionable little ones.
The chile usually used in piri-piri sauce is the African bird’s eye, a potent pepper with a complex heritage of migration, colonization and assimilation. Functions supervisor David Topper, just one of the partners at the rear of the march of Galito’s into the Mid-Atlantic, claims he and principal proprietors Waqas Hassan and Nadeem Khan get all their sauces straight from the mom ship in South Africa. The basting sauces are various from the bottled stuff accessible on the table to drizzle atop your finished rooster. The “hot” basting sauce, for instance, is thinner and meaner than the salty counterpart on the desk.
But both way, Topper is not privy to the pepper (or, additional probable, peppers plural) that offers Galito’s “hot” piri-piri sauce its distinct edge. No matter what the heat resource, it’s a flamable sauce, but not the kind that will make you research for the nearest carton of milk, or a priest. The sauce electrifies the palate adequate to fulfill the thrill-searching for aspect of your persona — nevertheless not enough, I’d undertaking, to appease genuine chile-heads — without the need of going complete-on Putin by repressing the other flavors that give the basting liquid its individuality: the lower hum of garlic, the tropical fruitiness of lemon, the sharp poke of vinegar.
The warm sauce is the way to go at Galito’s. It reaches its total likely with the signature flame-grilled chicken: The seasoned grill grates brand parallel traces into your marinated chicken when imparting an element of smoke to the meat, all of which intermingles with the warm sauce for whole-throated Portuguese rooster, each and every be aware loud, obvious and harmonious. I was also offered some semi-categorised data about Galito’s “extra hot” sauce, the things seemingly reserved for individuals who place Tabasco on their breakfast cereal.
“A minor secret is our ‘extra hot’ it is the exact same [hot] sauce. We just put much more on,” Topper tells me. “And we depart it a minor bit extended on the grill.” In other text, if you want to double your pleasure, buy your chicken added incredibly hot. There’s almost nothing to anxiety.
For those people with record in the D.C. area — by which I mean individuals who have lived right here at the very least 15 decades — you know that Galito’s is not the first South African piri-piri chain to check its menu in the Washington marketplace. Again in 2008, Nando’s Peri-Peri determined to guinea-pig its rooster on Washingtonians with its initial U.S. area on Seventh Road NW in Chinatown. Nando’s has since spread like oil on a sizzling flattop, with far more than two dozen retailers in the space. I question how many people even understand the chain’s South African origins?
I mention Nando’s not just for the reason that Portuguese chicken may possibly be the up coming bird to unfold its wings in the DMV, pursuing in the tracks of Peruvian rooster and Korean fried chicken, but also since the founder of Galito’s utilised to be a Nando’s franchisee. As the tale goes, Louis Germishuys had to offer his shops when Nando’s was getting back franchise areas. Not all set to surrender his piri-piri dreams, Germishuys workshopped his individual sauces, apparently in his father’s garage, nevertheless you have to marvel where the truth of the matter finishes and the legend commences right here. The initial Galito’s opened in Mbombela, South Africa, supposedly next to a Nando’s, which indicates, from the outset, Germishuys experienced either extreme self confidence in his products or a loss of life want.
It is inescapable to evaluate Galito’s with Nando’s, and not just since Individuals, as a general rule, love to rank items. I’ve generally loved the inside structure at Nando’s, with its emphasis on southern African artwork and fashionable fixtures. Nando’s would make rapidly-relaxed experience so adult, if in a kind of comfortable Soho vibe that only income can supply. Galito’s, by contrast, is sleek but functional, as if every single area is developed for an quick wipe down soon after Junior throws his sticky lemon-and-herb winglets to the ground.
But Galito’s, at least the just one in Gaithersburg and presumably others that the house owners will roll out in the better D.C. region, has a menu far more attuned to American tastes. Yes, Galito’s has a burger for these trolls who insist on beef at a hen joint. But the place also has things that speak more to the minute, no matter if a typically forgettable attempt at a fried hen sandwich or the a lot more unforgettable trio of Tex-Mex-design and style tacos in which grilled chicken (basted with scorching sauce, constantly the very hot sauce) is tucked into elastic flour tortillas with lettuce, shredded cheese and a prolonged, generous squeeze of a housemade condiment that mixes mayo with Greek yogurt.
Galito’s also has a extra memorable dessert than Nando’s: a sticky toffee pudding, sweetened with dates and a translucent drizzle of caramel sauce. No subject how comprehensive I obtain myself, I normally have room for that sticky toffee pudding. But the dish I think about most is the espetada, the skewer of piri-piri hen dangling from its personal meat hook. The point is equally adult and childlike: chicken nuggets for all those with a sense of adventure.
Galito’s Flame-Grilled Hen
15918 Shady Grove Rd., Gaithersburg, Md., 301-339-8967 galitosdmv.com.
Hrs: 10 a.m. to midnight Sunday through Wednesday 10 a.m. to 2 a.m. Thursday through Saturday.
Closest Metro: Shady Grove, with a 1.5-mile wander to the cafe.
Costs: $1.99 to $69.99 for all things on the menu, which includes household foods.
