Another great Ecuadoran place: Delicias Crucita on Foster

In search of Ecuadoran food last night, for my son who lived in Ecuador for five months, we stopped in at Delicias Crucita, 3312 1/2 W. Foster (just half a block west of Tre Kroner) (is Chicago wonderful or what).

From the outside, and indeed from the inside, this place does not look overly promising. But the food was fabulous.

For just over $30, three of us had as much food as we could eat, all of it just terrific.

Two of us had the fritada, mote, tostados y maduro plate. Fried pork (previously roasted, I assume-- ribs cut crosswise-- wish I had taken a photo!). The pork was moist and tasty, cooked perfectly. Mote - the big white corn, boiled, I suppose. Tostados - corn kernels roasted crunchy. Maduro - sweet fried plantain, so hot when it arrived at the table that I had to restrain myself so I didn't burn my mouth. The third person ordered the fried sea bass, which was cooked to perfection, moist, flaky, tasty. It was served with a pile of white rice-- quite authentic, they eat huge amounts of rice in Ecuador-- and felicitous since the person who ordered it didn't like the mote (not because of any fault of the mote!). The fish was so good I think I might order it next time, though it would be hard to imagine not having more pork.

Aji sauce was very delicious - surprisingly hot- and complex ingredients.

The aji and the paintings on the wall led us to believe the owners would be from the coast - aji in Quito (the capital, in the mountains) was generally bland, and the murals were coastal scenes. But when my son asked, the owner said he was from Quito.

We also had juice, one of the most wonderful things about Ecuadoran food -- they had mora (raspberry), naranjilla (a tropical fruit somewhat like an orange in flavor), and tomate de arbol (literally, tree tomatoes). We ordered tomate de arbol and naranjilla. I found the tomate a bit sweet, but loved the naranjilla -- my son liked both.

They had ceviche, and many other items on the menu that we were unable to try, we will need to go back. We were the only patrons most of the time (we arrived at 7pm on Monday night). This place looks like it needs business, and it certainly deserves it! We'll go back, though I may need to eat the pork several more times before I can move on to try something else.

If anyone else has eaten at this place, I'd love to hear how the other dishes are! And if you haven't, I recommend it.

PS a question-- I am posting this in the Cuenca thread since it seems to make sense to keep the Ecuadoran postings together-- but the title of the thread is not what I am posting about-- am I doing the right thing or should I have started a new thread??

Delicias Crucita
3312 1/2 W. Foster
Chicago, IL 60625
773-539-4702