Originally, I was going to make this an all suburban Peruvian post, and set out to visit a few restaurants in the afueras of the city. And, I made it to two, one solo, one with my most common lunching companion (other than Henry). But then we ended up at a couple in Palermo, and rather than make two posts and visit more restaurants before posting (not that I’m not going to check out more restaurants), I decided to present them together. It’s not like most of you are going to head to the suburbs anyway, right? Okay, some of you live there, so those are especially for you.
I’m going to go more or less in the reverse order tried, just starting with the most casual, in Palermo. In fact, sort of two branches of the same restaurant, though quite different. So here I am at El Peruanito Ray, Fitz Roy 2299, which is the original. I visited here a decade or so ago when I was on one of my Great Sandwich Hunt ventures, and tried a rather forgettable suckling pig sandwich. I’d not been back, but found myself a block or so away and hungry recently, and thought I’d give a shot at one of their regular dishes. It’s a stand – there’s no indoor seating, though they’ve definitely added more outdoor tables and chairs than they used to have. The menu is primarily sandwiches, but they have a few simpler Peruvian dishes as well.
Now, I’d actually put the place back on my list, as more than one person has recommended their Peruvian fried chicken. It was not specified whether that was the pollo broaster or the chicharrón de pollo, but I went with the former, as it’s a more classic fried chicken. Plus, unusually, the latter comes with fries only, no salad, and I wanted a bit of salad. Now, this is a quite good broaster. Juicy inside, crackly, well seasoned crust outside. Good fries, and the garlic mayo that was provided (several different sauces are available) was excellent. Even the dressing on the salad, though a bit too much of it, was really good – nice and herbal. I’d happily eat this one again.
One reason that the above was on my mind is that a trio of us recently went to the same folks’ new spot, El Peruanito Ray GH, Gorriti 5516 (I assume the GH stands for Goritti and Humboldt, the corner it’s located on). This place is huge. It hasn’t been getting great reviews, certainly not like the original space, mostly related to service. The menu is far more extensive, covering a much broader swath of Peruvian dishes.
We ordered up a trio of dishes. The first, a combination platter of ceviche, arroz con pollo, papas a la huancaina. All pretty good. The ceviche needed more spice, but ajicito, hot sauce, on the table, handled that. The huancaina sauce on the potatoes was really good. The second, tallarines verdes con pollo, one of my personal favorites, linguini with “Peruvian pesto” as I’ve called it before, and a nicely seasoned piece of chicken atop, with more of the potatoes. The third didn’t fare as well – my dish – the mollejitas al ajo – chicken gizzards in chili garlic sauce. They were just way too salty. At the level that I couldn’t eat more than a couple of forkfuls before giving up. I sent it back to the kitchen, where the chef and waiter apparently tasted it, as the latter returned to tell me I didn’t know what I was talking about, that it wasn’t salty at all, and that it was obvious that I didn’t understand the spice from chilies. No offer to do anything about it, or replace it with a different plate, unless I wanted to order and pay for something else. I guess the reports of service issues aren’t off the mark. This one’s off my list, despite that the other two dishes were good.
This one was a solo visit out to the ‘burbs. It popped onto my radar awhile back not for any recommendations (then again, our supposed goal is to try every Peruvian spot in the area, so it doesn’t need one), but because it popped up having the same name as Henry’s niece’s restaurant in Madrid that we ate at many moons ago (though never wrote up). Piscomar is located at Sgto. Baigorria 2415, in Munro, just outside the town’s train station on the Belgrano Norte line. It was empty the whole time I was there, and the two waitresses were clearly bored to tears – the woman whom I’m guessing runs the place kept having to get them off their phones in order to do anything – like bring me a menu, or food, or a bill, or really, do anything. Though they did jump to it when a young man wandered in and they seemed to have decided he wasn’t their sort of customer and more or less ushered him out the door, despite his protests that he had money, and really did want to order food.
Again with the salt. If this was happening constantly, I’d be worried about my tastebuds, but it’s been just a few dishes here and there. In one of those classic local interchanges with my waitress, once I finally had her attention, I asked for any recommendations on best dishes, and she started the litany of pointing and each and every dish, starting at the top, with “this one, and this one, and this one, and…”. A few online recommendations asserted that they made a great aji de gallina, so I went with that. This was not a great aji de gallina. It was both too salty (though not so salty as to be inedible, like the gizzard above), but was also pretty much lacking in gallina. Mostly it was sauce, bits of potato, and more sauce. The chicken seemed to have been an afterthought, with very little in there. Quite disappointing all around, atmosphere, service, and food.
This was the one that started the adventure, when our dining duo headed out to Oh! Mi Tumbes, Av. Pte. J. D. Perón 1816 in San Miguel one rainy weekend afternoon. About four blocks from the town’s train station on a the San Martín line. Lively, packed with people clearly enjoying themselves, attentive, friendly service. Particularly interesting, being a Sunday, this was one of the few restaurants we even saw open in the downtown area of San Miguel. Tumbes, by the way, is a city in the far northeast of Peru. Interestingly, I didn’t see any dishes on the menu that seemed classic for the region (then again, not sure they could get the ingredients for them here – in particular the conchas negras, little black ark clams, and the type of crab most common there).
We started off with a couple of empanadas. Not something I’d normally order in a Peruvian restaurant, but one of them filled with seco de cordero, slow braised lamb in a cilantro sauce, and the other with prawns, mildly spicy. Yeah, we can get behind those kind of Peruvian empanadas. For the main course, we saw a couple at a nearby table enjoying this sampler platter, the “carousel of seafood”, and ordered one up. It had a couple of different fried seafoods, a causa, leche de tigre, ceviche, and a chilled salad. It was all… fine. Nothing we didn’t like, but the spice level was kind of dumbed down to minimum. We did get hot sauce on request, though with raised eyebrow, apparently not a very common request, at least not for the majority of their customers, who didn’t appear to be Peruvian. I’d go back again, though I’d probably get something other than the sampler. Samplers are so rarely satisfying, I don’t know why I ever order them.
Okay, off to the kitchen to prepare tonight’s menu….
