I always appreciate having a breadth of cuisine types in the Madison area. Pikkito, which opened this summer, serves Peruvian fare in the former location of the short-lived Tucuma in Middleton.
The restaurant’s logo says “chicken lovers,” and here, it’s offered rotisserie style in quarter ($11.99), half ($16.99) and whole ($26.99) sizes. I found the chicken to be well seasoned and quite tasty, albeit a tad on the small size. For my side, I chose the fried yucca, which was like a denser, slightly sweeter version of a steak fry. In my opinion, it needed salt, but it meshed fine with the sauces you get.
Regarding those sauces, the cilantro sauce is excellent and will provide some zest to your food from the lime juice. I wasn’t sure what the orange-yellow sauce was, but it had a beany-mayonnaise taste and nicely complemented the chicken.
From the Peruvian Lovers section of the menu, I ordered the Seco De Res ($16.99), which featured chunks of beef shank that had an enjoyable flavor, but they were tough and could have been braised longer. The accompanying mayo beans were surprisingly good, likely because they absorbed all the sauce in the dish. Of note, I subbed white rice with cilantro rice, but all they did was add five pieces of cilantro on top.
You have to try the pork sandwich ($12.99). The pork is delicious and fall-apart tender, and it sits inside a toasted bun with some red onion for a little bite. I think the addition of the sweet potato fries inside the sandwich muted the pork, so I ended up taking them out.
Both the pork and chicken also are available as part of combination platters that pair them with items like sweet plantain or black beans in criolla salsa.
If you’re looking for something sweet, I highly recommend the decadent Cookies Alfajores ($3.99). Two cookies with a resemblance in taste to shortbread cookies are covered in powdered sugar with a caramel-like custard in between. You get two of these in each order.
Pikkito is open every day for lunch and dinner.
