Return visits to some places we haven’t been in awhile, or in one case, that Henry had never been to with me. Because it’s not always about the new and untried. Let’s work our way… up.

It was a strange Tuesday in the Abasto area. For some reason, we checked in on half a dozen Peruvian restaurants in the immediate area, and all were closed. Perhaps an early February vacation thing. But, Mochica, Agüero 520, was open, and it has been a little over five years since either of us had been. My recollection was that I hadn’t been fond of it, (borne out when I went back to read my past reviews), but the place had closed down for a bit, completely remodeled, and reopened with a supposedly refurbished menu as well as decor.

Service fairly inattentive, it took about ten to get someone to bring menus, and then another fifteen or so to take our order. And the kitchen was just as slow – two appetizers for me and a main course for Henry took almost forty minutes. The papa rellena, a deep-fried mashed potato ovoid, is normally stuffed with a meat stew, almost empanada-like, but in this case, I doubt there was more than a couple of tablespoons of a bland filling somewhere in the middle.

Seven years ago, I’d had this excellent leche de tigre, with enough fried seafood atop it to make this enough for lunch on its own. The new version, pictured above next to the potato, has one fried prawn, and the rest was a pile of red onion and a few cubes of fish with some fairly bland leche around it – all about half the size of what I’d had previously. Henry’s seco de cordero was at least cooked properly, tender and falling apart, and the meat and sauce themselves were reasonably tasty, though the accompanying tacu-tacu, a fried football of rice and mashed beans, was flavorless and dry.

Now, looking back at my review, plus the two linked single dish reviews, I guess, overall, I’m not surprised we were disappointed. Also quite expensive for what we got, even considering inflation – the more abundant and satisfying leche de tigre back in 2014 cost the equivalent of $5.75, while now it runs just over $9 (920 pesos). And while main courses five years back ran around $9, they now run between $13-20 (anywhere from about 1300-2100 pesos, this particular dish was 1490 pesos). This place, while not bad, isn’t good enough to warrant going back to again – I’ve given it enough chances, and there are too many other quite good places, most of them less expensive, within about a two block radius.

A solo Monday out in Floresta in the second Koreatown. I’d had a couple of spots in mind, but they both turned out to be closed, one just for the day, the other apparently didn’t make it through the last two years. I just decided to go back to a place I hadn’t been in awhile, Chung, Ruperto Godoy 731. One of my favorite junghwa yori dishes (Korean-Chinese fusion, you can see the story of that on my original writeup for this place) is jajangmyeon, or spicy black bean noodles. It was as good, and as spicy, as previous visits, though my sense was that the sauce bowl was noticeably bigger, and it was too much sauce for the quantity of noodles. Still, better that than not enough sauce! Pricing two and a half years ago ran about $5.60 for this dish (220 pesos at the time), they now run just a little under $7 (700 pesos). Quite reasonable for what you get.

I’d gone several times last year to Verdot, a lovely wine bar at Quintana 465 in the Mio Hotel here in Recoleta. Tasty, casual meals, and great wines by the glass. Henry had been in Peru during a big chunk of last year and missed out on those lunches. So we popped over this last week for a couple of glasses of wine and a light lunch. We split a delicious tortilla de papas with chistorra sausage, and a whole lot of potato. We liked the cubed potatoes the way they were, just a touch different from many that use layers of sliced potato. I had the chicken caesar salad again, and Henry tried the lamb pastel, basically a shepherd’s pie, though topped with sweet potato rather than potato. All delicious, and all, while not inexpensive (and, prices haven’t changed in the last few months that I could see), quite reasonable for quality and taking into account that it is a high-end hotel.

And, we celebrated our 17th “unofficial” anniversary together at La Mar Cebicheria, Arévalo 2024, Palermo. A favorite now since it opened in 2015, it’s also just a very occasional… special occasion kind of spot, because it’s a credit card melter.

My biggest criticism of La Mar, and it’s happened to us a couple of times, is their timing on things. We’d ordered a round of cocktails, and a bottle of wine. Both were brought at the same time, a good 15 minutes after we’d ordered them, and were followed within 2-3 minutes by the appetizers. We left the wine on ice and had the cocktails with the appetizers, but at a place of this quality level, it’s just stupidity on their part to serve that way. People who order cocktails and wine want one before the other, and you can almost count on that they want to sit and relax with their cocktails for a bit before food (and wine) are served.

It’s not like the place was full and they needed us out of their quickly or something, which would be another whole pet peeve. This time, too, we had a bit of an issue with our waitress, who kept trying to talk us into ordering different things than what we wanted to. Not sure if she’d been assigned to sell certain things that day, but I didn’t hear any of the other waitstaff trying to do the same thing. It reached the point where she was becoming argumentative and annoying, and I finally asked her why she was doing it – after which she stopped.

Anyway, a very good ceviche of lisa, grey mullet, a somewhat unusual fish for making ceviche out of, but it worked. A tiradito of octopus, a take on the classic octopus with black olive sauce, here with the black olives chopped into a salsa with red onions, cilantro, and bell pepper, and accompanied by little mounds of puffed amaranth seeds. (1760 and 2450 pesos, respectively… I told you the places would do some damage to a credit card).

Likewise excellent main courses. Henry’s tallarin saltado was a tasty saute of thicker noodles, almost like foratti, in a soy and ginger based sauce with fillets of fried fish. And my sopa seca was a fried spaghetti in a sauce made from a reduced chupe soup with lots of fresh shellfish. Both really delicious. (2100 and 2600 pesos.)

An excellent suspiro limeño, one of the best either of us has had. On the other hand, a disappointing callejero, for two reasons – the layer of basically unflavored ice cream in the middle just overwhelmed the strawberries at the bottom and dulce de leche whip at the top. Individually, the layers were good, but they were out of balance – plus, it was served in a tall tumbler, but the spoon offered was actually shorter than the glass was tall, making it a mess to eat. Add in the difference you can see in the size, of two desserts at the same price point, and it just didn’t quite mesh. (1050 and 990 pesos.)

So, almost everything delicious, but with service that just wasn’t up to par. The timing thing we’ve experienced before, though this was the worst it’s been, and the argumentative waitress was a new experience. The food was as delicious as ever.

At the time of my original review, in 2015, the appetizers were running between 100-200 pesos, while main courses were 200-300. At the time, the exchange rate was about 9.13:1, so appetizers were priced $11-22 and main courses $22-33, approximately. Appetizers now run from about $1700-2500 (exchange rate early this month around 105.5:1), so $16-24, and the main courses from about 2000-3500, or $19-33. So they’ve stayed pretty consistent, and while the prices are higher in pesos, they’re really about the same in dollars as they were.

With wine, cocktails, water, and tip, we shelled out 17500 pesos, or about $165 – as I said, a special occasion kind of place – and had the service not been off, it would have been well worth it, and, at least food and setting-wise, it was. Hopefully on future visits we have a different waitress.