RESTAURANTS : OC LIVE! : Savoring S. America at Ginga Brazil, Pollo Inka

Euclid Street in Anaheim happens to have two of Orange County’s best South American restaurants. One is a Brazilian barbecue buffet where you eat for under $10; the other is the only Orange County branch of a popular chain, based in the South Bay, that specializes in pollo a la brasa, which is Peruvian-style spit-roasted chicken.

Ginga Brazil (the name sounds almost like “Jingle, Bells” when a Brazilian says it) is run by Israeli-born Alon Lebel and his Brazilian-born wife, Dora. Ginga means “knack” in Portuguese, which is exactly what this energetic young couple has for running a business. The Lebels’ restaurant is a bright, tropical-themed place where the music never stops. On Friday and Saturday evenings, there are live Brazilian bands. At other times the tape deck is always on, bringing you the music of such artists as Fabio Junior, a killer Brazilian vocalist.

Most of the dishes served here await you at a steam table, but for a surcharge of $2, you can have all the churrasco you can eat. That’s the famous Brazilian barbecue where garlicky marinated meats are brought directly to the table on swords, still sizzling from the fire, and sliced before you. The Lebels serve chicken, smoked sausage and tri-tip sirloin this way. The only thing a Brazilian might miss is pork. Because of Alon Lebel’s background, he doesn’t serve any.

Eat these meats with vinagreche, a Brazilian salsa made from minced tomato, onion and hot peppers. Meanwhile, back at the steam table, there are a variety of home-style dishes popular in Sao Paulo, Dora Lebel’s hometown.

Little, irregularly shaped rice cakes, fried golden, together with braised yuca root and fried bananas, are the side dishes. The main dishes include the Brazilian favorite chicken stroganoff (I’m not trying to be funny; it really is a staple of Brazilian restaurants): thin strips of chicken in a cream sauce with assorted peppers. You can also get terrific spicy braised beef with tomatoes and onions, the ever-present Brazilian black beans (feijao), white rice, the cheesy popovers called pao de queijo and a purely Portuguese stew of codfish and potatoes.

Salads are included with the buffet, and though they run to such exotica as hearts of palm and black-eyed peas, you can find potato salad and a few fresh-cut vegetables, American-style. Desserts are extra, but they are worth the expense. Musse de maracuja is a frothy passion fruit mousse. Pudim is rather like flan, but the Lebels make a dark, rich chocolate version I’d put up against any in the county. It’s only $2.

Ginga Brazil is inexpensive. The buffet is $5.95 for lunch; $6.95 for dinner Sunday through Thursday; $8.95 Friday and Saturday. At all times, add $2 for churrasco.

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In a market saturated with rotisserie-chicken places, El Pollo Inka might just be the best.

Its chicken is cooked in a huge charcoal pit and served with French fries or rice and a Peruvian salad. The skin of the chicken is crisp, and the meat is juicy and tastes both of wood smoke and a fruit marinade. You eat your chicken with aji, a creamy herbal hot sauce dispensed from a plastic squirt bottle. I can’t think of a better roast chicken in Southern California.

El Pollo Inka also serves a huge menu of Peruvian dishes. This gaudy restaurant is dominated by a back-lit, iridescent mural of Machu Picchu, the ruined mountaintop city that survives the vanished Inca civilization.

In addition to the peerless chicken, this restaurant serves--my apologies to every other nationality that makes the dish--the best ceviche around. (Well, why not? Ceviche originated in Peru.) It’s a lime-marinated mixture of snapper, shrimp and scallops on a giant platter embellished with yam and sweet corn.

I never eat here without ordering a bowl of cancha, huge fried corn kernels that remind you of half-cooked corn nuts. I’m also fond of an appetizer called ocopa, halved potatoes in shrimp and walnut sauce.

Among the 40-odd main dishes El Pollo Inka serves, any number are sure to please.

Try the fried fish combination jalea, enough breaded shrimp, squid and octopus, with lots of marinated onions, to serve two or three people. Parihuela is the Peruvian equivalent of bouillabaisse, stocked with snapper, clams, squid, octopus and shrimp. A tomato-based broth and various herbs makes it only a distant cousin to siete mares or any other Latin American seafood soup you might be familiar with.

To drink, there is the medicinal purple corn beverage chicha morada, kept ice cold in a Jet Spray cooler. Mazamorra morada is like a jellied version of the drink, a glutinous pudding you might have to be Peruvian to love.

If you come on a weekend, there will be the pumpkin flour Peruvian doughnuts known as picarones, an absolutely delicious confection. During the week, content yourself with alfajores, shortbread cookie sandwiches with a caramel cream filling.

El Pollo Inka is inexpensive. One quarter chicken is $3.75, a half is $4.75 and a whole is $8.75. Main dishes are $3.95 to $13.95.

* GINGA BRAZIL

* 821 N. Euclid St., Anaheim.

* (714) 778-0266.

* Lunch 11:30 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. Tuesday through Friday; dinner 5:30 to 8:30 p.m. Tuesday through Thursday, 6 p.m. to midnight Friday, noon to midnight Saturday, noon to 9 p.m. Sunday.

* Visa and MasterCard.

* EL POLLO INKA

* 400 S. Euclid St., Anaheim.

* (714) 772-2263.

* Open daily, 11:30 a.m. to 9 p.m.

* Visa, MasterCard and American Express.