Speedway drive-in to appear on Food Network
Long before Marcos Perera learned Che Chori would appear on “Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives,” the Argentine restaurateur was taking his own worldwide tour of regional eats that chef-host Guy Fieri calls “Flavortown.”
Working as a sales manager for Weaver Popcorn and other snack brands, Perera spent much of the 2000s attending food expos across the globe. He sampled local cuisines and learned about ingredients while visiting 24 different countries. The travels served as a crucial chapter in the self-described foodie’s culinary education, which began at his mother’s side in his boyhood Argentina kitchen.
“Cooking goes as deep in my memory as hanging out with my grandma and my mother,” Perera said.
Perera arrived in Indianapolis in 2006 by way of Miami, where he worked in various restaurants. He carried his love of Argentine food to the Midwest, making his own chorizo at home until his friends and family encouraged him to open a restaurant and share his cooking with the rest of Indianapolis.
Perera’s countless hours in a plethora of kitchens finally coalesced in late 2020 when he opened Che Chori in a former Rally’s in Speedway. Customers order Perera’s native cuisine at a drivethrough window and receive plastic bags loaded with Argentine flavors carried to their cars.
How to watch Che Chori on ‘Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives’
Friday night at 9 p.m. on the Food Network, Perera’s decades of accumulated skill will be on national display alongside celebrity chef Fieri. Che Chori will showcase its Argentine fare in the season 40 premiere of Fieri’s “Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives.”
“I was a little apprehensive about it,” Perera said of appearing on Fieri’s show. “You’re dealing with a top chef. You’re dealing with people that have years in the industry, that have not only training but a lot of exposure.”
With 39 seasons of ‘Triple D’ under his belt, Fieri has munched on an immense gutful of the flavors the United States has to offer. But Perera believes his take on Argentine cuisine is something the frosted-tipped food mogul has yet to taste. Che Chori’s slogan — “Artisan food with an Argentine twist,” reads the sign by his popular drive-in at 3124 W. 16th St. — speaks to the restaurant’s from-scratch recipes that take days to make and Perera’s own willingness to defy tradition now and again.
While Perera couldn’t disclose which dishes he prepared for “Diners, DriveIns and Dives,” a description of the episode on Food Network’s website hints Fieri will highlight Che Chori’s “chimichurri chorizo and prime-time porchetta.” I recently swung by Perera’s drive-in to sample what could be Che Chori’s entry into the ‘Triple D’ canon and learn how the spiced sausage gets made.
What sets Che Chori apart?
When Perera talks about the food he makes, the corners of his mouth seemingly can’t help but curve into a smile.
“I’m a little obsessive about it,” he said.
Che Chori sources its bread dough, oregano and several other ingredients from Argentina. Once foods reach Perera’s kitchen, they’re subject to meticulous preparation that often lasts multiple days.
Take the porchetta (por-ket-uh), a traditionally Italian stuffed pork belly featured in Che Chori’s porchetta sandwich ($17 with fries). Che Chori’s cooks spend three days with each roast before they load it onto a toasted French baguette. First, they salt the skin so it can dry thin and crispy. The next day, they stuff the pork belly roll it and place it in an herby marinade for another 24 hours. On the third day, the porchetta is finally cooked for seven hours.
Pay close attention, and you can taste each phase of the 72-hour process. The meat slices range from a slow-roasted, butter-soft interior to salt-dried edges fried into crispy chicharrones. Pickled onions and a slathering of chimichurri (parsley, garlic, oregano and other herbs in oil and vinegar) brighten the meaty mouthful with sweetness and tang. And the baguette is what any good sandwich loaf should be: dense and chewy, hefty enough to hold its fillings but not so bulky that you have to mangle it beyond recognition just to fit your teeth around it.
Still, the sandwich is a bit of a beast. You need at least three hands — or two far bigger than mine — to corral it from the box to your mouth in one piece. Of course, there are worse things than rounding up fallen pork hunks and dunking them in your side of chimichurri.
The chorizo is a similarly time-consuming endeavor, requiring two days to prepare. Perera started tinkering with different spice blends for the sausage at home in his free time — “I think my wife got kind of tired of me stinking up the house,” he half-joked — years before opening Che Chori.
Perera’s final formulation appears in Che Chori’s choripán (chorizo sandwich) and in its empanadas. Each empanada is an airy cocoon of fried dough cradling gooey cheese, pork and onions. Biting into one yields a deeply satisfying crunch and a small but potent payload of toasty, comforting flavors, including a non-traditional pinch of sugar to round out the flavor.
“We want people to have this extra sensorial experience,” Perera said. “The flavors grow in your mouth as the seconds go by.”
Friday night, America will watch Fieri take his red convertible across the country to experience those subtle seasonings and textural contrasts for himself. But luckily for those of us in Indianapolis, Flavortown is just a quick drive down 16th Street.