A dish that taste like home

There’s a story I’ve always loved about one of Ecuador’s most beloved dishes: seco de pollo.

It’s the kind of story that might be true, or might just be one of those tales that people keep repeating because it feels too good to let go.

They say it began decades ago, in Ancón, a small town on the coast where American and Ecuadorian oil workers once shared long, hot days and short lunch breaks. The story goes that when the locals served lunch, it always came in two parts: a soup first, and then the segundo: the “second” course (the main plate). The foreigner workers, trying to communicate, would ask for the “second.” And the Ecuadorian cooks, catching the sound more than the word, began calling the dish seco.

Whether that story is true or not, no one knows for sure. Historians have found recipes for seco long before any foreign companies arrived. But I like to think that, as with all food stories, the truth is somewhere between fact and flavor. Maybe the name came from the way the stew “dries out” while it simmers, or maybe it really was born from a lunch-table misunderstanding. Either way, the result is the same: a dish so rich, so comforting, that it’s become part of who we are.

What I find most beautiful about seco is that it has no single version.

There’s the seco de chivo in Manabí, with its deep earthy tones. The seco de gallina criolla in the Sierra, slow-cooked until tender. The seco de pollo in Guayaquil, bright and aromatic. Yet beyond geography, there’s something more intimate: every home has its own “traditional” recipe.

And for me, the best seco de pollo will always be my mother’s. Rich with naranjilla and that touch of something you can’t quite name, but that makes it taste like love.

Food, like language, changes through time.

A word misheard becomes a tradition. A dish passed down becomes a memory.

And somewhere between those two, we find the stories that define us.

Did you know this version of the story about seco?

Or maybe, in your country, there’s a dish whose name was also born from a misunderstanding. One that tells more about people than about recipes.

After all, food isn’t just what we eat. It’s what we share, what we remember, and what we keep alive.