Pollo Rustido

The freshly minted Boqueria has an advantage over its sibling in the form of a rotisserie, which turns out to be the source of one of the restaurant’s most enticing dishes: roasted organic chicken. Vidal calls it his choice dish, because it reminds the Barcelona native of “the way we eat in Spain.” The recipe calls for generously seasoning the bird with salt and pepper and leaving it in a cooler for a day — a dry brine. The chicken is later cooked with fistfuls of bay leaf and other herbs, as well as lemon and lard, and basted frequently. The outcome summons flashbacks for Vidal, who remembers eating similarly flavored chicken with his family on Sundays, when their Barcelona restaurant was closed, and at a summer house on the Costa Brava, with potato chips.