Big Brasa Energy

Chicken that rotates you

We didn’t know we wanted Brasa’s Peruvian chicken until we had each downed a cocktail at Nye’s piano bar. This being a day date, we were too early for piano playing, and Nye’s red leather interior couldn't compete with the weather outside.

So, after a Google search, we headed up Hennepin Ave to Brasa Premium Rotisserie. It was 60 degrees and sunny, which made it feel like 75. We strode past the old world Kramarczek’s Deli toward the new world of creole-inspired fast-casual. A young Bob Dylan look-alike emerged from a vintage shop and overtook us on the sidewalk. We talked about how, in the fickle Minneapolis spring, temps in the low 60s can feel as good as temps in the mid 70s, just as when we lived in Texas we came to experience driving 100 miles as more like driving 50.

Brasa provides a patio table at which to consider these warps, and also participates in them. The restaurant occupies an old gas station that’s been painted the brown of the chicken’s skin and the yellow of the rice that would soon appear on the plate we shared. I took this as an attempt to fold us into the food we ate. The paint job announced: You exist in a comfort food world now.

The remarkable thing is that it’s just chicken. Chicken cooked while slowly spun. Chicken you likely associate with home, but made in a way you can’t cook at home, to eat when you are short on time.

At Brasa you can sit with intention and eat quickly this modern chicken that is often an afterthought with or without thinking about it. Inside the restaurant, there is a host stand, but there is no reason to talk to the host, as I learned when I talked to him. Instead, you can simply choose a patio table and scan the QR code and have an embellished version of a home-cooked meal brought to you.

I don’t usually like QR codes, but they work well at Brasa. There is even a $5 glass of tempranillo, listed at the top of the menu's “Popular Choices” section that I couldn’t resist. It came out warmer than it’s supposed to be, which made it taste better.

Soon after that, two pieces of chicken with rice and red beans and a side of yucca fries arrived with a single cup of green sauce. One of the “Popular Choices” at Brasa is to order as many as six extra green sauces for $0.85 each. We understood this acutely when we ran out of sauce.

The tables around us were full of large groups mostly younger than us. Eating chicken outside is good for imagining a home with your chosen family. Brasa delivers that fantasy at speed. The best part was deciding to go in the first place. That’s the warp.

What if this speed were home? I thought, just before Lee remembered that we could bounce, because when we ordered we also paid.

We headed down to the Mississippi River to check on its energy.