Photograph by George Sakkestad

Cindy Wang owns Chicken Salsa, which she says offers the 'healthiest food in town.'

Chicken Salsa dishes up its namesake and much more

By Suzanne Cristallo

Drivers along Saratoga-Sunnyvale Road often see flames leaping merrily around plump chickens on a spit behind the big window of Saratoga's Chicken Salsa.

Meanwhile, the staff moves busily about their preparations for lunch, when every seat will be filled around a zig-zag counter and into a dining area next door. Many have been with owner Cindy Wang a majority of the eight years she has owned the Mexican food diner that claims to have the "healthiest food in town."

"It's a hot place," Wang says, and she can take credit for it.

Meat dishes are cooked in two ways. Beef and pork ribs and chicken pieces are barbecued over an oakwood-fired grill. Whole chickens, on the other hand, after soaking in marinade overnight, are roasted over mesquite wood fired by gas. For three and a half hours, they turn slowly on a spit, allowing the fat to drip away. This also reduces calories. "Gas cooking has a different taste from electric, which is the easier to control," she notes. "But both fire and heat are contained--like in a fireplace--and it keeps the moisture in."

Control of moisture is the key to Wang's success with her popular meat and tortilla dishes like enchiladas, burritos, quesadillas and tacos. Suspecting there must have been a reason why the eatery changed hands three times in the 10 years before she bought it, she recalls taking home a tortilla dish to test.

"It was all soggy. So the first thing I did after buying the place was to take the moisture out by decreasing the wet salsa." She put the salsa on the side instead and made the taco sauce drier. "People doing take-out found they could use the food the next day."

Next, she made the chicken more moist by adding beer to the marinade (she uses mostly Budweiser) and leaving the fowl in the marinade until roasting time. A whole chicken salsa runs $9.45 a la carte.

Gradually, business increased. "I spent a lot of time modifying the menu and increasing quality," she notes. "I'm also very cautious about meats being too done or underdone, so I'm eyeballing it all the time. So far, so good," she smiles.

Residents of Saratoga for more than 18 years, Wang and her husband, Yu, are greeted as "Mr. and Mrs. Chicken Salsa" by customers. Their daughters, Melissa and Lesley, now both students at Santa Clara University, worked in the store while attending Saratoga High School. "Teenagers love our place," Wang adds. "They claim we have the best burritos in town."

Her success has come only after learning the hard way--through experience. Her earlier career was as supervisor of an assembly line in an electronics company that laid her off. She wanted to be her own boss, so, lacking food experience, she looked for an ice cream shop to buy. "I thought it would be the easiest, because all you do is scoop," she recalls. But a real estate agent convinced her Chicken Salsa would be her most convenient choice, since it was close to home.

Wang, 49, came here from Taiwan in 1970. A student at West Valley College, she was dining alone at the Peking Restaurant in Palo Alto when she attracted the eye of Yu Wang, then an executive with Hewlett Packard's semiconductor division, seated alone at another table. "I didn't notice him, of course--he was 16 years older. But he got my number from the owner, a mutual friend, and called me," she laughs. "He was a nice guy--still is!" A year later, they married.

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Chicken Salsa, 12019 Saratoga-Sunnyvale Road, Saratoga. Open Mon.-Sat. 11 a.m.-9 p.m., Sun. noon-8 p.m. Call for take-out orders. 253-5667.

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