Peruvian food has been on deck to become the next big culinary thing for a really long time now.
And maybe it should be the next big thing. After all, Peru is one of the coolest places in the world. I’ve been only once, and although I stuck mostly to the Lima-Cuzco-Machu Picchu tourist track, I really dug some of the food I ate. Like the limey, refreshing ceviche in Lima, the hot, bracing coca tea on the Inca trail, and the soft, meaty alpaca carpaccio in Cuzco.
But for some reason, Peruvian food in America too often gets lost in translation. Rarely have I been wowed by Peruvian food here in the States – not in New York, not in Miami, not in San Francisco. I always expect a sexy Latin kick, but I’m nearly always left unsatisfied by its inherent, well, subtlety.
(I’m trying not to say blandness.)
Cebiche, a new restaurant in the Highland neighborhood, is the latest flag-waver to trade in Peruvian cuisine. It’s a totally pleasant place to spend an afternoon or evening (especially on the inviting patio).
And if Peruvian-cum-American food is your thing, it’s a fine place to eat a meal.
Your meal should begin, naturally, with a pisco sour, a lovely frothy-fruity cocktail made with pisco. Pisco, a grape-based brandy, originated in Peru (or Chile, if you ask a Chilean) and at Cebiche it’s shaken with sour mix and egg white, and topped with cinnamon. Totally refreshing.
The tastiest appetizer on the small menu was the eponymous cebiche, lime-juice-marinated chunks of whitefish tossed with garlic, ginger, cilantro and red onions, a tangy summertime jumble.
(Note: ceviche and cebiche are the same thing, and pronounced in the same way. In most of the Spanish-speaking world, “V” and “B” are all-but-interchangeable bilabial fricative consonants; spellings of words containing this sound are subject to local customs and/or personal preferences. Hence, one man’s ceviche is another man’s cebiche. Someone else might even spell it seviche, or even cevice. But it’s all the same thing: citrus-marinated fish.)
Here’s how cebiche works: When you toss raw fish with raw citrus juice, the acid in the juice interacts with the flesh, leaving it firm and opaque, as if it’d been cooked.
Empanadas, puff pastries stuffed with sirloin steak, were also tasty, if not as addictive (or as inexpensive) as the empanadas downtown at Buenos Aires Pizza on 22nd Street.
Papas a la huancaína is, perhaps, an acquired taste, one I haven’t yet acquired. Basically a cold composed potato salad with a creamy pepper sauce, Cebiche’s version was dull and devoid of edge.
(Aside: Potatoes, now grown worldwide, are native to the Andes. If they hadn’t been transported back to the Old World by the Spanish, Ireland as we know it would probably have sunk into the sea.)
For a main course, choose the lomo saltado, a fry-up of steak, potatoes, onions, garlic and sweet yellow ají peppers with a hit of salty soy sauce. Accompanied by a scoop of white rice and pile of French fries (a much better use of potatoes than the papas appetizer) this dish could be mistaken for a Chinese wok-prepared stir fry, colorful and filling.
Unpopular with the other folks at my table, but a favorite of mine, was the pescado a lo macho, a lump of pan-seared whitefish cloaked in a creamy, mildly spiced white sauce. Others found it too soft and milky; I liked the echoes of the creamy baked cod dishes of my distant New England heritage.
One of the most familiar flavors on the menu appeared in the adobo arequipeño, juicy cubes of pork tossed with red adobo sauce, slowly stewed, and tossed over rice.
Interesting, if not to my taste, was the ají de gallina, a mash of chicken and nuts with black olives and hard-boiled eggs, billed as an Incan-Spanish hybrid dish. I’d never experienced anything quite like the creamy, almost nutmeggy flavors in this oddly textured dish.
By far my favorite thing on the menu came at dessert: picarones. The searing-hot, ruddy-red, doughnutlike fritter-rings of pumpkin sat, steaming, on a puddle of cane-sugar syrup, sweet and fresh and intoxicating. I’d come back for a pisco sour and a plate of these any night.
If you can’t score a table on the patio, you’ll find Cebiche’s room friendly but unremarkable. Housed as it is in a once-residential building, it feels appropriately homey, if a bit creaky and worn.
Service at Cebiche is charming, but in the evenings, overextended. Lunchtime is the sweet spot here, you’ll certainly find a seat on the patio and you’ll have plenty of attention. At suppertime, sip your pisco sour slowly and exercise patience.
Cebiche can’t yet compete on the Peruvian-food front with the superior Limón on East 17th Avenue, especially now that Limón has expanded and turned its room into one of Denver’s most welcoming. But they’re working on it.
And as for Peruvian cuisine being the next big thing, I’m still waiting.
Dining critic Tucker Shaw can be reached at 303-954-1958 or at dining@denverpost.com.
Cebiche
Peruvian | 2257 W. 32nd Ave., 303-433-1305, | * 1/2 | Good/Very Good
Atmosphere: Casual neighborhood restaurant in an ex-residential building. Lovely patio.
Service: Charming and helpful, if overburdened at times.
Wine: A few choices, but treat yourself to a pisco sour. Sangría, too.
Plates: Appetizers $2.95-12.95. Entrées $10.95- $12.95.
Hours: 11:30 a.m.-9 p.m. Tuesday-Thursday. 11:30 a.m.-10 p.m Friday and Saturday. 10:30 a.m.-8 p.m. Sunday. Closed Monday.
Details: All major credit cards accepted. No reservations necessary. Street parking. Get a table on the patio if you can.
Three visits.
Our star system:
****: Excellent.
***: Great.
**: Very Good.
*: Good.
No stars: Needs work.
