Photo by Neidy Gutierrez / SOC Images.
Perquín, a Honduran restaurant in downtown Jersey City, has a new location and expanded menu. Walking into their new space you are greeted by colorful latin vibes with signs that read “Maje que rico,” loteria cards hung on the wall and a vibrant mural by artist Mr. Emagin.
Perquín originally opened last November before abruptly shutting down at the end of August. The restaurant quickly became a neighborhood favorite with its Latin American finger foods like baleadas and salchipapas. Now they’ve re-opened in the same neighborhood, Paulus Hook, which was “non-negotiable” for owner Bryan Girón to stay in.
The restaurant, which moved right across the street at 84 ½ Morris St., the former home of Speedy’s JC, is serving up Honduran and Latin American inspired dishes, with Girón’s own culinary touches, aiming to keep the cuisines authentic, yet approachable.
“[In] a lot of countries we eat the same ingredients, maybe not exactly the same, but you feel at home when you have something that even remotely reminds you of stuff that you grew up eating,” he told Slice of Culture.
“Like, if you’re Salvadoran and you have Nicaraguan food, you’re not going to be like, ‘Oh, this is exactly it,’ but you’re like, ‘Oh, man, that really reminds me of what, my grandma used to make’ and that’s kind of the feeling that I try to invoke here. I want people to come here and eat and either never have had it before and be like ‘Wow, I want that again’ or be like, ‘Wow I used to have that when I was a kid, that tastes like my grandma made it.’
“That’s my favorite compliment ever.”
Girón and his team make everything in house from the pastries, tortillas, sauces, juices and queso fresco. His team members come from different countries each with their own stories but, still, similar missions, embracing their Latin cultures and rico sabor (delicious flavor).
The new location, which comes with a wood-fired oven, allows Girón and his team to expand their menu and live up to the Perquín name. Perquín, which means “road to the embers” or “road to the fire,” comes from the Lencan languages indigenous to Honduras and El Salvador in Central America.
The wood-fired oven allows Perquín to offer dishes like pollo a la brasa (charcoal-grilled chicken), red onions and their newly added pastries, which gets a “beautiful color” and a layer of flavor that couldn’t come from a conventional oven.
“Pollo a la brasa is something really common all throughout Latin America. Everybody makes it a little bit different, but at the end of the day, it’s pretty similar,” Girón said. “So with that (wood-fire oven) and a combination of the sauces that we’re doing, the sides that we offer for our feast… I hope it becomes a really important staple of our menu.”
Perquín also now offers a breakfast menu, pastries and coffee. Some of their breakfast and pastries items include:
- Quesadilla Salvadorena (sweet corn and cheese bread)
- Ham, egg and cheese empanada
- Saltena (Bolivian beef empanada)
- Their popular corn pancakes with crema, Honduran honey and orange zest
“We used to only offer corn pancakes for brunch there, and then everybody was like, ‘No, please have them more often’ so now we have them every day for breakfast. We make the batter with cornmeal, so it has a little more texture than your normal pancake batter would, and then that gets served with our sweet crema and honey,” Girón explained.
“Growing up, my grandma would always make me pancakes, and they were always kind of super thin, almost like a crepe. And she would always give it to me with crema, which we call mantequilla and honey. So that to me was like, ‘Wow, this is a perfect pairing.’ I just wanted to make the pancakes like a little bit more substantial.”
They continue to offer their four popular appetizer dishes: soup, salad, ceviche and salchipapas. The salchipapas quickly became a staple of their menu, which is spiced french fries, wagyu hot dogs, smoked chorizo, nduja aioli, aji verde and scallions.
For the salad, ceviche and soup, Girón usually changes the style of the dish every season; sometimes even once a month depending on how ambitious he’s feeling. Currently they’re serving Mexican-style ceviche and their original lentil soup or potaje, which is made with yellow lentils, red sofrito and tops with mojo pork.
“This is something I grew up eating. Usually, my dad would make it with split green peas, but the color on it is not the prettiest, so I swapped it out for yellow lentils. This feels like a warm hug, and every time you have it, it doesn’t get old,” expressed Girón, who believes this lentil soup was how he got his fiancée to fall in love with him.
Shrimp Chuco (Neidy Gutierrez / SOC Images)
Some of Perquín’s top seller items are the baleadas, chucos and taco arabe. A baleada is made with a fresh flour tortilla, which are made daily—hand stretched one-by-one—refried beans, sweet plantains, queso fresco, sumac onions and avocado. Another Honduran street food is the chuco, which is crispy green banana chips topped with tomato salsa, red cabbage encurtido, white sauces, herbs and for a protein topper, they offer chicken or shrimp.
Before opening up Perquín, Girón spent 10 years learning from other chefs and experiences along the way. He’s worked in Italy, Miami and right across the river in New York City at Tao, Barbuto and Shukette. He also worked at Bread and Salt in The Heights.
In his dishes, you’ll find Middle Eastern touches with spices and garnishes that pair well with Latin American food, which is influenced by his time at Shukette. The taco arabe has that Middle Eastern influence with its chicken shawarma, spiced fries, sumac onions, toum and habanero.
With this revamp, Perquín hopes to become the “ultimate neighborhood restaurant” with its fun environment and tasteful menu items.
“We take pride in the fact that we have a lot of customers who come visit us very frequently, and I want to grow that,” Girón said.
“ I like a comment that we got once. It said that, you know, ‘Paulus Hook hadn’t heard a Bad Bunny song until we came’ so, it’s things like that that make me feel good. You know, where we’re introducing our culture, our food, our way of eating, kind of all these little things that create this really unique dining experience.”
“I like to think that if Perquín wasn’t around, a lot of these people, a lot of our customers, our neighbors, would never know what a baleada was or know what chucos are. So to me, I feel like we’re doing our due diligence with introducing our culture and our food to our clientele, to a neighborhood, to a city that otherwise wouldn’t have known about it.”
Perquín is also BYOB. They’re open from Tuesday through Thursday from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m., Fridays from 8 a.m. to 9 p.m. and Saturdays from 10 a.m. to 9 p.m.
