Queso fresco and poblanos give this chicken sandwich a Mexican accent.

Will Horowitz is the type of chef who pickles, smokes, and ferments anything that isn’t nailed down. He’s a cook who creates flavor combinations as vibrant as any modernist chef, not with rotovaps and liquid nitrogen, but with decidedly old-school techniques, and not in a sleeve garter steampunk poseur fashion either. He’s the type of guy who does his own foraging and who reduces poblano chilies to cinders to sauce a smoked chicken sandwich.

“I burn them until they’re reduced to charcoal,” he told me after I’d polished off what’s surely the Lower East Side’s best seasonal smoked chicken sandwich. The smoky spicy creation being offered at Harry & Ida’s Meat and Supply Co. also features pickled ramps, huitlacoche, sage, and queso fresco. It runs a close second to the shop’s much ballyhooed pastrami.

When I asked whether he makes the queso fresco Horowitz told me he scores it up the block at Zaragoza Grocery and went on to extol the virtues of its goat lung stew. Looks like I’ll have to pay Zaragoza a visit sometime soon. I predict a deli/Mexican bang bang in the near future.

Harry & Ida’s Meat and Supply Co., 189 Avenue A, 646-864-0967