el condor's back room

those of you who went on the milwaukeethon(was it last year?) may remember the little ecudorean grocery store on the 2300 block of north milwaukee. they had fantastic homemade popsicles(the 'mora', is the most intensely blackberry flavored food i've ever had) and some of us shared a styrofoam container of pork cooked by the owner in the back room.well, after taking a friend on her first visit to the tamale van at milwaukee and washtenaw saturday, we wandered up the street to el condor. after eating a popsicle we asked what , if anything, was cooking in the back. we were invited to sit, where we joined 3 young ecudorean men at a long kitchen table .they were chowing down on heaping plates of food. on the counter was half a baked pig. we were only mildly hungry at this point, so asked for a little plate of food. we got some delicious chunks of pork,some of the best potatoes i've ever eaten (they were pale orange, but not sweet potatoes and wonderfully crusty, but not greasy). also, some salad with red onion/tomato salsa as the dressing and some hominy (which benefitted from adding some homemade aji salsa. (aji is a bright orange, hot, pepper). one of our fellow diners is a salad maker at spiaggia, which was kind of cool. the kitchen, however, was not. very hot, but what a great experience sharing food in this fashion. i think we paid $5 for the shared plate. justjoan

Joan, thanks so much for posting about this place. Mike in his how to make things famous, should figger out how to make this place famous. Not only is the food's terrific, the people that run it are amazingly nice and really want you to enjoy and sample their fare. I hope you inspire some people to get there.

Can we get a post facto GNR in here (I know, I know, I'm kiddin'...)

Today, I had the first menudo I ever really liked. I got it at El Condor's weekend kitchen at the back of the store.



The tripe was cubed, mixed with potatoes, and served with a type of succotash and rice. I have not yet identified the seasoning (turmeric, maybe?), but it was quite nice to have the diced tummy in small pieces rather than big spongy slabs (as one might expect in the Mexican soup).

We also had carnitas...



As you can see, these carnitas also seem only vaguely related to their Mexican counterparts of the same name; I doubt they were cooked in their own fat, but they were quite tasty and that deep brown slab of glistening skin was fabuloso.

I very much dig the mote (maize) here.

Hammond

El Condor
2349 North Milwaukee Avenue
Chicago, IL 60647
773-252-5112

The pork you had there is called fritada.. carnitas is mexican food

cdkatuofc wrote:The pork you had there is called fritada.. carnitas is mexican food

I spoke with the owner and "carnitas" is the term he used. Checking my menu from Restaurant Ecuador, they list fritada as "fried pork," which it actually didn't seem like, either. What I had was, unless I'm mistaken, simply roasted.