Rotisserie Madness: St. Croix's chicken magic.
/
St. Croix, US Virgin Islands
No matter where in the world you are, there is chicken. When traveling I try to find what the locals claim is the best or most iconic chicken dish. Every place has one; it’s just a matter of finding it. How boring, one might think when considering the exotic and surprising cuisine burgeoning around the world. But don’t misjudge the common chicken – that magnificent bird of the barnyard who scrapes and scratches very low down on the human food chain. Because a simple cooked chicken is a thing to behold, and doing it properly is an exacting task for even the most accomplished chef. At New York’s famed Le Coq Rico they serve a whole cooked heritage chicken for $118. Nearby, a Jewish deli rotisseries whole chickens for five bucks. Both are delicious.
Which is why I found myself on a busy road in St. Croix, far from any beach and searching for the one joint that everyone mentioned immediately when asked where I could find the best cooked version of my feathered friend: La Reine Chicken Shack. “By de market jus outside city center,” I was told repeatedly.
“Outside city center,” I soon discovered, meant dead middle of the island, not remotely close to anything touristic. That’s because La Reine Chicken Shack is not a tourist attraction. But as soon as I arrived I knew I had found something special. Even before spotting it on the side of the road I smelled it in the air. The deep, smoky fragrance of chicken fat over hot coals drew me in. It stirred something woven deep within my DNA; a basic human reaction to food cooked over fire. Long-suppressed Neanderthal emotions emerged, revoking all free will and pulling me toward the source of the umami aroma like a cartoon character floating along the scent of a pie just set on a window sill to cool.
At La Reine it’s easy to find that source. Just step up onto the wooden deck of the brown barn-like building and get in line, because — yes — there is always a line at La Reine. There are several items on the printed menu above the counter of this simple place, including ribs, fish and undoubtably delicious crucian specialties. But pretty much everyone gets the chicken. You order quickly, take your number and your meal is delivered to the window in Styrofoam. You walk it to any vacant table and dig in as if it’s some no-big-deal fast food joint.
But where, I thought, do they cook this chicken that draws such a crowd and whose scent is as good as any I’ve ever smelled? I wanted to follow my good-food discovery progression in its proper order: smell, see, hear, eat. So before I would even taste it I had to witness the process of making it. And an exploratory wander around to the rear of the shack by the gravel parking lot led me to the promised land: a covered cement slab with half walls attached to the back of the building. Beneath it, a few corrugated steel panels formed troughs filled with lump charcoal and a large, rotisserie-like getup. Above the glowing coals, long steel poles were suspended horizontally by hooks at either end of the troughs. And on those poles were chickens — dozens of them — spooning one another end-to-end like kababs on thick skewers.
Let me be clear: the rotisserie of La Reine Chicken Shack is not a wonder of modern technology. In fact, it’s more like something a few buddies with a case of cold beer and some spare parts in the garage might cobble together. The mechanisms used to rotate the skewers are simple electric motors repurposed from old dryers and bolted to small tables. The shaft of each motor has a fan belt rolling from it to the rustic gear box that the pole is jammed onto, causing it to rotate. Power cords trail from the motors across the floor to nearby outlets. The skewers rotate slow and steady, the chickens dribbling their golden juices onto the other birds below. Smoke flares up in violent sizzles, enveloping the chickens in an aromatic haze before continuing to the ceiling and sneaking around the edges of the roof and into the air. Occasionally a cook appears, lifts an entire rod-o-meat and slides the birds onto a tray to take inside. It’s a makeshift example of beautiful food borne out of simplicity and resourcefulness. Madness and genius, merged into one.
Sometimes you know food is good just by looking at it, and La Reine’s chicken proves that point. Even before that first bite — before your teeth even crinkle through the just-crispy skin and into the juicy meat of the main event — you know this is not fast-food grub. Golden and glistening, the chicken is flecked with a secret mixture of spices that the shack “holds close to the vest,” as I was told by the guy working the skewers when I probed. “But just that light sprinkling is all,” he added. No marinade or dry rub, no lengthy preparation to make it taste special. “It’s just chicken, spice and heat, man.” Skewer, spin and repeat for about 300 birds a day. The result: naturally bronzed skin blanketing meat of incomparable texture and taste, delivering the pure, unadulterated essence of chicken in its truest, open-flame form. Round it out with a johnny cake and some other provisions, maybe a cold Carib from the bar, and you realize that, in this moment, there is nothing more you need in your life.
Fast food? No. Poultry magic? Yah man….
Centerline Road, 24-I Kingshill, Christiansted, St Croix, U.S. Virgin Islands
