As I have access to the sanctuary of a saint which is the grace and protector of the city and its burgeoning police force, international petitions have come my way, via email and Whatsapp, making the communication between sender and saint quite questionable, but what is the messenger to say. Only a meager, Yes?, I shall, handwrite your spiritual qualms the night before, with a frozen glass of pisco sour moistening my fingertips and a slippery grip on a blue ballpoint…and so the words tailed along on a free grocery notepad, verbatim. The Feast of Santa Rosa falls on 30 August and for the faith of others, I take the holy Peruvian Tuesday off, excited to just do something out of the ordinary. It is a public holiday and Niki does have the day to herself, besides that one meeting that she needs to attend at 8 in the AM.
It is dark out when the alarm vibrates the phone off the shoe rack and onto the floor and henceforth, still dark when I hop over Niki and out the door to hit the snooze for another 10. It’s so cold my fingers freeze instantly. I have a noteworthy capacity for not retaining heat and every time I place my hands on Niki’s belly, she smacks them right off. And so she did this time, half asleep debating if we should call a Didi or take the Metropolitano, just to get that extra inch of shut eye. And Didi it was. Everything happened so quick that when we ended up on Avenida Tacna, my gaze out the window was still an awakening transition. I was still a tad bit curious as to why stores were shuttered but that all changed once we got closer to the church.
So what we do is this; we gather petitions written with great affection to the Patron Saint of Lima, Santa Rosa. People start queuing hours before the gates of the church open, inside of which used to be the home of Santa Rosa and the much miraculous Well of Desires, where troves of Limaneans wait in anticipation for the gates to open so they can toss their written desires into the Well of said Desires. I arrived at my spot four blocks away from the church after securing two envelopes for two separate petitions: one for mom and the other for a cousin. We spit sealed the impending sanctified demands and gawked at the tyranny of Limaneans, even minutes before entering the house of God. For one reason or another, the police had to reorganize the line as it got longer. It surely is a tricky feat, getting a line of groggy adults moving from one city block to another in perfect harmony and sequence. But Limaneans being Limaneans, latecomers seized this opportunity to cut the line, and grogginess turned to dismay and dismay turned to a fit of screaming chaos between the two facets, literally amplifying the snooze you lose sentiment. And Niki, always a trigger finger in her own right, started berating the perpetrators. To add to this vivid chaos, you have your street hustlers trying to sell pens, paper and envelops apart from the regular black coffees and tamales, all this while you waited in line. I stood beholden and entertained.
I was quick to toss our petitions into the well so much so that Niki couldn’t snap the required shot in time. My preoccupation compelled me to aim for those tiny squares, so said letters actually fall into the well and not just bare the burden of others’ desires that would have heaped over them. We made it for the exit and along the pathway leading out onto the street, vendors sold blessed souvenirs to polish the memory of this saintly morning. I picked up a key chain for my mom, which had a locket of Santa Rosa and San Martin de Porres within its silver heart shaped design. Adjacent to the exit, we find a tiny fair in a small plaza slowly coming to life. This is where the sisters of the perish set up their stalls showcasing a variety of Peruvian foods from Arroz con Pollo to Picarones. Unfortunately, none of them were ready to serve just yet. Fortunately, we had another immaculate plan. We crossed Avenida Tacna and wandered up the tight but charming Jiron Conde de Superunda. The tiny stores displayed a variety of things from screwdrivers, turron to Peruvian breakfast sandwiches: Pan con Palta, Pan con Camote, Pan con Queso y Jamon etc. The famous downtown colonial facades were most prominent here, however a tad bit ghostly and abandoned, yet nostalgic in its own veneer. Adventuring into deeper territory, a collision of factors hit you in the face and provides quite a dizzying experience: the old and the new, the dangerous and the questionable, trends that refuse to budge, unwillingly adapting. The push and pull is immense, yet it feeds the harmony intangibly. We strolled towards Plaza Mayor de Lima, pursuing the legendary Pan con Chicharron at El Chinito. The minutes counted down to 7 AM as we maneuvered through crowds of police officers preparing for the Santa Rosa Parade at the Plaza. Our faces lit up as we arrived, seeing that they were raising the shutters early. Niki asked a lady fiddling with locks if we could enter. She said to wait about 5. Cool.
We were the first clients of the establishment. I debated between the Chaufarroncito (fried rice with generous slices of fried pork and sweet potato) and the classic Chicharron sandwich, simply tagged as Chicharron on their menu. Both me and Niki knew we were getting coffees but wanted to avoid the tamal which came in their breakfast sets. Side note. Niki is from the region of Cuzco. Tamales are sweet in Cuzco. We are partial to the sweeter ones compared to those offered in Lima, which are pretty meat intensive and ultimately savory. It is all a matter of preference. I figured it was just too early for a plate of rice and pork, henceforth choosing the Chicharron was just the rational decision to execute. The waitress said 15 minutes for the wait. Niki hit the home button on her phone to check the time. She said fine.
We got the sandwich and the cafe con leches a la carte just to avoid the tamales and the right decision it was, economically and preferentially. This was so that I could splurge more on lunch later but the fact that I don’t even remember what I ate renders the lunch experience uneventful. The salsa criolla came in a separate silver receptacle first, and following this our cafe con leches. The coffee arrived thick and milky, blowing steam into our faces along with the tantalizing aroma of an exquisite morning. The prime sip burned my tongue in a good way and hit my brain and nerves in that comforting glow that perks you for that righteous path ahead. This way to start a morning comes as crucially undeniable as anything else. Even before the coffee experience had begun to fade, our sandwiches arrived at our table heaped and steaming from the fresh chicharron, the sizzle of oil on its skin still audible. We questioned all the reasons that we could possibly identify in the name of Santa Rosa de Lima, after taking our first bites, why we hadn’t delighted in this eponymous grease fest before. The ratio of crisp to juice to grease to tenderness to heat rendered a perfection so acute that it was painful to swallow just because every evolving microsecond exposed a new level of intensification in flavor. I had watched videos on the preparation, and the level of articulation and experience required exposes no easy feet as to arrive at such a complex, yet simple composition of fried pork.
Now let’s deep dive into the assembly of the sandwich. The bread used here is your standard generic Pan Frances, cheaply available and quite ubiquitous. Texturally, it takes on the structure of a baguette however, a little softer and easier on the gums with a crispyish outer crust essential to holding the sandwich intact. Underneath the heaping portion of chicharron, we find chunky slices of camote (Peruvian sweet potato: the orange kind) providing a pillowy sensation that comforts each bite after some serious mastication. To those bubble blisters out there who think the sweet might be imposing, it isn’t. As a matter of sweetest fact, it molds the cumulative bite, neutralized by the salsa criolla and takes its passage to the gut defying all your inherited doubts. While salsa criolla activates the spice and sours: red onions, coriander, aji amarillo (Peruvian yellow chili) , aji limo (Peruvian red chili which is optional), lime juice, salt and pepper. After washing it down with my with my cafe con leche and Niki’s (she couldn’t finish hers due to her stomach not being able to process milk and pork at the same time + such and such complaints) that desaturated feeling of satiation began to blanket me. Smiles were ignited as we talked about how perfect the breakfast was and how we never get to see the city at this time of day. Police officers started filing in, leaving their suitcases on tables just to secure a spot, looking polished and green in their uniforms ready for the parade of their patron saint. Niki insinuated it was time to leave.
I decided to spend some time in the area, check out the parades and perhaps buy myself an arroz con leche somewhere along the street. Niki had to make it home for her 8 o’clock. I walked her to Avenida Abancay, the heart of Cercado de Lima, where she could either take the Metropolitano 409 back to San Isidro or a taxi. She got a taxi for 10 soles, I closed the door after her and she was on her way. I took a deep breath of that clean morning air, unsure of what to do next. I looked around me at the business coming to life: street vendors pushing their carts out of dark alleys, groggy young adults kicking up stuck storefront shutters and just the increasing flow of traffic and the honks that signal the commencement of the downtown heartbeat. I exhaled and made my way back to Plaza Mayor, keeping my heart open for whatever unfolds that morning, or just maybe, to let Santa Rosa guide me.
