Perusing Peru Cuisine

Selva Grill, serving the best from Peru, is a hip anchor of Sarasota’s Main Street.

You taste it in martini glasses of ceviche — seafood pickled in lime juice, sparked with peppers and tickled with cilantro. If the chef is actually Peruvian, it may be garnished, authentically, with the crackle of crunchy corn and mellowed with a cool slice of sweet potato.

That’s more fun than rice and beans, not that there’s anything wrong with that. Peru makes a warm tacu tacu of those Latin staples and spit-roasts chicken to a crispy gold too. But the Andean country has other gourmet specialties that now give an exotic edge to kitchens from South Beach to Sarasota.

We already had Cuban, Puerto Rican and Mexican cooking. Colombian, Ecuadorian and Venezuelan chefs were drifting to Miami, and Brazilian and Argentine steak houses are stampeding across the state. Yet cocina peruana, the most distinctive cooking south of Mexico, has become the brightest rising star. Dozens of humble cevicherias on south Florida roadsides now serve rich, thick chupes and cups of chilled seafood at workaday prices. The same flavors parade in flashier dress at nuevo Latino restaurants of many flags from Lincoln Road to Coral Gables.

La Cofradia’s pork with grapes.

When foodies sat down for an elegant dinner at the James Beard House in New York this year, they brought in chef Jean Paul Desmaison from Miami to cook his modern Peruvian specialties from La Cofradia — anticucho skewers, ceviche of sole and octopus plus risotto spiked with yellow peppers. Born in the posh Lima suburb of Miraflores, Desmaison moved to Coral Gables two years ago.

Peru provides chefs with a unique pantry from the mountains and jungle: Great avocados and rare peppers, the mother lode of potatoes and a vast catch of fish, shrimp and mussels. The country makes its own brandy for a national cocktail, a Pisco sour with egg white foam.

Peru’s cookbook is global, too, with immigrant tastes and recipes from Italy, Africa and Japan. Ceviche, whether of shrimp, grouper or corvine, is close to sushi and was once treated as such by American diners. Peru’s large Japanese community includes both a one-time president and star chef Nobu Matsuhiro. Today, Sushi Samba Dromo in Miami has a Peruvian-Japanese menu with a hot dollop of Brazilian.

Ceviches also fit small-plate menus, a hot trend toward lighter dining. In
Coconut Grove, a Latin fusion restaurant, Jaguar Ceviche Spoon Bar, serves, as the name suggests, spoonfuls for $2. Ceviche and other small bites need
no translation for tapas bars, where Florida fish and hot peppers sit beside Spanish jamon and cured olives. Ecuadorian chefs make ceviche a star at
The Table in Sarasota (and recently in St. Petersburg).

A full Peruvian menu goes beyond ceviche, however. For a tiradito, fish are sliced more like sashimi; in jalea, seafood is fried up like an Italian fritto misto. A meatier snack is grilled anticucho skewers, a kebab originally of beef heart, spiked with cumin.

Robust lomo saltado is like Chinese pepper steak stir-fry or a Japanese sukiyaki, served over rice in ubiquitous chifa restaurants, as Asian restaurants are known throughout Peru.

With any meal, including those featuring rice or noodles, Peruvians have potatoes. They were born in the mountains and now grow in a rainbow from cool blue through sweet green to sunny orange. They make perfect fries, creamy potato salad stuffed in avocado, and infinite casseroles, enriched with eggs, cheese and olives.

“We are blessed,’’ says Darwin Santa Maria, who grew up in a restaurant family in the high jungle town of Tarapoto before his family fled to Florida and landed in Sarasota. “Like everyone, I started washing dishes.’’ He rose to be a prized sous chef at Fred’s, and in 2002 opened his own tiny place in a modest strip center. “Nobody served ceviche. My friends said I wouldn’t make it.’’

Today, his Selva Grill is a hip anchor of Sarasota’s Main Street and nightlife. He opened Malabar to serve upscale salads and Peruvian sandwiches with a side
of tabouleh made with the ancient grain quinoa. Ironically, Peru itself didn’t appreciate its own cuisine until fairly recently. Twenty years ago, even Lima’s best restaurants favored Continental cliches over local dishes. Today, however, the brag is on the native favorites that are making such a hit in Florida. “Peru is going to be the gastronomy capital of South America,’’ says Santa Maria.

Gracias, muchas gracias.

Tags: Dining & Travel