Pollo K-Tracho Restaurant

🇭🇳 HONDURAS / The chicken and fish dishes popular in Northern Honduras are the stars of this new restaurant just north of the 10 in Harvard Heights.

🇭🇳 HONDURAS
📍 1905 S. Western Avenue,
Harvard Heights, Central Los Angeles
🅿️ Ample parking in plaza
🥤 No Alcohol

📸 All photos by Jared Cohee
for Eat the World Los Angeles

The intersection of Western Avenue and Washington Blvd. is somewhat of a powerhouse of Central American representation. Both Pan Victoria Restaurante Y Panadería and Sabor Nicaragüense represent the highest standards of Guatemalan and Nicaraguan food, respectively. A new player on the block looks to be the shining star of Honduran food, and focuses on the famous fried chicken of its nation.

Stepping inside this restaurant, which lives in a slightly run-down shopping plaza on the southwest corner of the intersection is an immediate escape to joy. The folks that operate the place are full of smiles and happy to share their food with you if you have any questions. A big map of Honduras and photographs from back home share space on the colorful walls.

A basket of fried tortilla chips come before the rest of the food, with mild tomato salsa and a dusting of cheese. If you enjoy it, this comforting salsa can also be found on enchiladas hondureñas, which consist of these three ingredients as well as ground beef, beans, cabbage, and egg.

The other component of any Honduran meal that will also arrive before the entrees is a big container of pickled red onions called encurtido in Honduras. These are meant to be used as liberally as possible, to throw on everything that you think might benefit from their sharpness.

Not just the name of the restaurant, pollo catracho is another way describing pollo chuco or pollo con tajadas, a style of fried chicken dish very popular in Honduras. The fried chicken of your choice is served over a bed of tajadas, or sliced plantains. Here at Pollo K-Tracho, the aptly named pollo catracho ($18.95, below) comes with these and a salad of shredded cabbage (repollo) covered in chimol and grated cheese.

You can choose between the leg and thigh shown below or breast, but either way the whole thing will be covered in their creamy house mayo salsa. Different versions will set themselves apart by their delicious sauces, so make sure to try many different vendors when you are traveling in the northern part of Honduras. Time your visit for mid-January and celebrate el día nacional del pollo chuco on the 18th.

Chuco means dirty and is often a derogatory term for someone that is not smelling so nicely, so the origins of the dish have to be explored. The first versions of pollo chuco showed up on the bustling street corners of San Pedro Sula, the country’s largest city. The dish got popular when it was offered for a good price at just about any location someone could set up a fryer.

While baleadas are (rightly) the most well-known Honduran dish outside of the culture, people from the north of the country are always happy to find this now famous fried chicken during special events and festivals here in Los Angeles. Thankfully in Honduras and here in town the dish is prepared and consumed by people who generally smell pretty good.

The baleada sencilla ($3.95, above) is a thing of simple beauty, a perfectly thick flour tortilla folded over Honduran beans, cream, and cheese. It is left on the griddle just a little longer than a novice might do so, charring the puffiest pieces and improving the taste that much more.

Just south of the city of San Pedro Sula and not known for being dirty is Lago de Yojoa, the country’s largest lake. This destination is known for its small roadside restaurants preparing freshly caught fish, so it was with great joy to find out that the menu here includes mojarra frita estilo Lago de Yojoa ($18.95, below). This whole fried tilapia is fresh enough not to need salsas, but slivers of that encurtido are perfectly timed with big bites of the meaty fish.

Lago de Yojoa-style fish are lightly salted and spiced before frying. At these restaurants it is customary to also have tajadas, so you will find a thick bed of them under the fish. The repollo with chimol and house mayo salsa rounds out the simple yet delicious plate.

If you were a fan of those chips from the beginning, come in for a second time and order the tacos catrachos ($15.95, below), which are almost footlong tortillas rolled around shredded chicken and fried. The whole dish has a healthy ladle of tomato salsa and more chimol. The thick tortilla is hard to penetrate even with a knife, but you may want to at least cut it in half before picking it up. These are no antojito, plan to be stuffed even if this is the only dish you order.

While you may think the baleada would be the national dish of Honduras, often sopa de caracol ($29.99, below) gets this title. This conch soup is so delicious and renowned that it has a hit song that most people can sing along to if it comes on the television. Si tú quieres bailar, sopa de caracol!

The soup is thick from coconut cream and is full of big pieces of conch and lots of vegetables hidden in its depths. Diners who need some acidic components to their soups might want to squirt in some lime, but using scoops of rice with each bite also helps lessen the richness. You can eat this with fried green bananas or tortillas.

Honduras like other countries in Central America is a beautiful blend of cultures, and this soup is a great representation of the Caribbean and African influences. The northern coast is known by most tourists for Roatán and the other Bay Islands, but the 700 kilometer coastline has such an abundance of peoples and traditions.