I’ve been missing a lot of restaurants over the past few weeks, but particularly Gusto, a small Atlanta chain serving rice bowls with fresh meats and veggies. While I’m trying to support local places by ordering takeout, Gusto is on the other side of town and traveling there doesn’t seem in the spirit of Atlanta’s current shelter in place order.

The other day I attempted to recreate my favorite menu item at home: the chipotle mango avocado bowl with chicken. It was about 60% successful. You can see what I did and let me know if you have any other ideas to improve on the recipe.

Ingredients

First, I took 1.5 lbs of chicken breasts and marinated them in 2 tablespoons of chipotle salsa and 2 tablespoons of vegetable oil for 3 hours.

Chipotle Salsa

After marinating, I grilled the chicken on a gas grill at 350℉ for 6 min on each side. Before adding it to the bowl, I sliced it into one inch slices. The chicken turned out a bit spicier than Gusto’s regular chicken, but overall pretty good. I may try a more subtle, soy sauce-based marinade next time.

Next I tried making the mango, avocado, lime vinaigrette that tops the bowl. I used:

1 mango (diced)

1 avocado (diced)

2 tablespoons of lime juice

1 tablespoon of cilantro (chopped)

1/2 cup of black beans

1/2 cup of corn

I mixed all these ingredients in a small bowl and called it a day.

mango, avocado, lime vinaigrette

This was the most successful part of the recipe and mirrored very closely what Gusto serves.

Next, I attempted to replicate their delicious smoky chipotle pepper cream sauce using an online recipe. This is where things went horribly wrong. I believe this recipe is designed to create something entirely different from what Gusto serves. I may need to get more creative to accurately replicate this. It calls for:

1 cup plain yogurt recommend European style yogurt, or Mexican crema (or crème fraiche)

1–2 small chipotles in adobo seeds removed — adjust to taste based on desired level of spiciness

1 clove of garlic

Juice of 1 lime

I had to replace the chipotles with a few tablespoons of my chipotle salsa since the grocery store was out of chipotles (probably related to the current global health pandemic).

You combine these ingredients with a food processor (or Magic Bullet in my case). This is what I ended up with:

“Smokey chipotle pepper cream sauce” 😭

The final result tasted way too much like yogurt while still being pretty spicy. I suspect the actual recipe involves heavy cream of some sort, but I’m not entirely sure. Let me know if you have any guesses!

Lastly I made some white rice and added chopped cilantro and a little lime juice.

I threw everything in a bowl along with some spring mix and topped it with monterey jack cheese.

Overall, it was a solid meal, but definitely failed to capture the Gusto magic. I also forgot to attempt their delicious sweet potato chips. It made me long for the sweet, sweet day when quarantine will be over and I can walk into Gusto and order the real thing.