Just an overload on fusion cooking, at two top nikkei sushi joints, and I finally found a place serving Italian-Peruvian fusion cooking! And a quick market visit, of course. I’m going to more or less post those in reverse, let’s cover the market visit and Italian, and then just overload you with beautiful sushi pix!
A visit back to Mercado Surquillo, along with a friend from BA who was overlapping my last day and a half in Lima. He’d never been and wanted to see it. These are some of the weirdest grapes I’ve seen.
Fresh scallops with their coral… looking ready to eat… and we almost did (and should have)…
…but the fresh sea urchin were calling, and he’d never tried sea urchin before!
The guy at the stand was happy to open one, extract the “tongues”, give them a quick rinse, and let us try them. This particular urchin was a bit paltry inside, and he downcharged us accordingly. Still, delicious!
Okay – one of the weirdest dining rooms I’ve been in. Hanging from the ceiling, by sisal ropes, are empty Chianti bottles and a wide variety of whiskey bottles. Lining the walls, revolvers, rifles, and shotguns galore. What any of that, other than perhaps Chianti flasks, has to do with Peruvian-Italian fusion cooking, I have no idea, and neither did my waiter. But, it’s the decor at San Ceferino, in San Isidro.
The menu is massive – something like a dozen pages, each with probably 20 items on it – though many of those are just simple variations on a single theme – like a different type of fish or shellfish over the same pasta and with the same sauce. Some of them are pretty classic Italian, but at least half the menu makes use of Peruvian sauces, in particular, to spice up Italian dishes. I wasn’t in the mood for wine or beer, and decided on a pitcher of frozen lemonade with grenadine.
I was going to order an appetizer and a pasta, but my waiter assured me that the pasta would be more than enough, and that the appetizers, for the most part, were large, shareable ones. I settled on a couple of grilled rock lobster tails with rock lobster stuffed ravioli, and an anticuchera sauce – basically the marinade used for anticuchos – vinegar, wine or chicha, oregano, panka chilies, garlic, onion, and more, and then emulsified. I really wish I’d had more people to sample dishes with, and/or more time to go back and try more, because this was just plain excellent. Loved it, and loved the idea… some sort of take on it to come, here at home. Not cheap, but the portion was huge, at 89 soles, or $27, and, it was lobster….
I’ve been to Maido several times, and decided to give one of the most famous of the Nikkei sushi joints a chance, Osaka, the original location. Now, we have two branches of Osaka here in BA, and both are outrageously expensive. So, I approached with trepidation. Turns out, that while expensive, it’s not nearly as pricey at the ones here – probably 2/3 the price, or even less. By way of comparison, I think the two-piece nigiri sushi at the Puerto Madero branch last year when we went ran around 200 pesos, or roughly $5/piece, and are probably more expensive now; while in Lima, the same two-piece nigiri was running around 20-25 soles, or about $3.50-3.75 per piece.
And, away we go… (oh, and just to make it easy, without exception, spectacular!)
Hotate Truffle – scallops, white truffle butter, lemon
Not ordered, but a single pork gyoza, courtesy of the house.
Shiromi Spicy – white fish of the day (sea bass), shiso, green onion, spicy sesame oil
Tuna Foie – tuna rolled around rice, seared foie gras with teriyaki sauce, Maldon salt
Salmón Skin – cracker crisp salmon skin, glazed with tare sauce, green onion, sesame, Maldón salt
Paiche Kabayaki – a surprising fish for sushi, paiche, you may remember from our trip to the Amazon, a few years back, slightly chewy, glazed with a tare sauce, and topped with the white part of the green onions.
Kunsei – mackerel, smoked over muña, an Andean herb, and brushed with a nori seaweed emulsion.
Wagyu – my least favorite, though still quite good, wagyu hanger steak, grilled, chilled, and then torched to order, with green onion and lemon. Because it was chilled, and only the surface got warmed, it was just a little odd, I’d have preferred it hot through and through.
Buta – slow braised pork jowl, glazed in soy and pisco. A simple, wow, and almost like dessert as the last plate.
So, 16 pieces of amazing nigiri, extraordinarily creative, a cocktail, a bottle of water, and tip, came in at 260 soles, essentially $80. Expensive, but worth it. My only criticism, is they really pounded out the pieces. They didn’t come, plate by plate over the course of a nice leisurely sushi lunch, but I generally had 2-3 of the plates in front of me at any one time, and as fast as one was cleared, another was put down – I was in and out with eight plates of nigiris in about 40 minutes from the time I sat down and started to look at the menu.
And, next day, after the market visit, I treated my friend to lunch at a place I’d been to before. Originally, I wanted to take him to ámaZ, one of my favorites, and we went there, only to find after perusing the menu and starting to order, that they were out of more than half the items on the menu, including every single thing we wanted to order. They’d “had a busy Saturday and the deliveries hadn’t come in yet”.
So the pickings for Monday lunch were slim to none. Rather than settle for whatever happened to be leftover, we went next door to Ache, which I’d eaten at once before and had a lovely, and fairly classic, sashimi and sushi meal. I hadn’t delved into their nikkei menu at all, other than the sushi chef giving me a sample of one piece. They had three classic sushi nigiris available, plus, 11 out of 12 of their nikkei nigiris (no sea urchin… booooo). Given that I was sharing with someone, I just ordered one portion of each, which were two-piece portions, and they very nicely served them on individual plates to each of us. A little amuse of grilled rock cod over avocado puree started us off.
Well, they couldn’t have gotten this one more inaccurate, though still delicious – we’d ordered the griddled prawn gyoza and received the steamed pork ones. Presumably our order just got switched with another table, although the bill showed steamed pork ones, so maybe not.
Classics – tuna, salmon, róbalo (rock cod, the same fish in the amuse).
A trio of salmon preparations – aburiyaki, salmon belly, with “nikkei” sauce and green onion; teriyaki, with teriyaki sauce and mint, and trufado, with a mushroom and truffle oil glaze, and basil powder.
Hotate spicy – scallops in a spicy cream with cilantro and lemon zest; Tunaki, seared tuna with tobanjan, or spicy bean paste, ginger and green onion; and, Hotate chimichurri, with cheese, chimichurri, and tare sauce.
Cebisushi de pejerrey, a river fish, silverside in English, in a tiradito sauce, or ceviche cure, with garlic, onion, celery, and cilantro; Inka, seared tuna with toasted quinua, ginger, and green onion; and Entraña parrillera, hanger steak in an ossobuco reduction with caramelized onions (same quibble as above at Osaka, it was cold except the surface, we’d have both rathered it be hot).
Salmón parrillero on the right, with an ossobuco reduction, a little crunch from fried wonton wrappers; and unagi, freshwater eel, with a tare sauce and sesame.
All very good. All I’d happily eat again. Not the finesse, or quality, of Osaka. Friendlier service. Still rapid paced, which I don’t quite understand – maybe it’s a lunch hour thing, I noticed they were doing the same to all the tables, just sending out everything en masse. Notably less pricey than the previous day, with pairs here coming in between 16-20 soles, or about $2.40-3.00 per piece.
Finished off the trip at the airport with a green salad. My stomach needs a break, delicious as everything was on this trip! And home with plenty of ideas for new things to experiment with here.
