Ceviche by the Sea

Johanna and I went to Ceviche by the Sea tonight. My mother had read a favorable review about the place, and sent me there to do some reconnaissance work.

Well, Loretta will be happy to know that we had an excellent meal.

We each started with one of mom's favorite Peruvian dishes: Chupe de Camarones. This is a shrimp and vegetable soup, with the soup made from a shrimp stock. It was slightly different than its Peruvian namesake, mostly in the selection of vegetables. For me, the fact that there were habas missing from the soup made it better, but I am not sure that purists will agree. But the purists weren't at our table; Johanna and I were. We both loved it.

 

Rather than order main dishes, we shared three different appetizers. The first was the Pique Parrillero, which was a grilled hot sampler. This featured three items: Grilled Pulpo (octopus), Anticuchos de Corazon (beef hearts on a stick) and Scallops Parmesan. The octopus was excellent, the beef hearts good, but were lacking the traditional anticucho sauce, and the scallops were OK. I always compare the ones I get here to the far superior scallops available in Lima, and maybe that's an unfair comparison.

Our next dish was Causas de Cangrejo. Causas are mashed potatoes used as a food delivery device. These were topped with what we would call crab salad. They were very good.

Our last dish was Ceviche Nikkei. This was small chunks of raw tuna marinaded in a soy/sesame seed mixture, rather than the traditional lime juice. I'm a big tuna fan and have had this many times in Lima. It was OK for me, although I thought that the chef went a little overboard with the marinade; I could hardly taste the tuna. Johanna had a hard time getting fully around the concept of raw tuna. She ate some of it, but her heart wasn't really into it, much less her very full stomach.

I wound up eating my entire bowl of soup, exactly half of the sampler, only one of the causas, and about two-thirds of the tuna.

I don't allow myself desserts here at home (or pretty much anywhere, for that matter), but I extolled the merits of trying Picarones to Johanna, so she did. Picarones are basically donuts, except instead of the donut batter most of us are accustomed to, these are made out of a mix of sweet potatoes and squash. She was only able to eat one of them, and took the other three home with her. Here she is with her Picarones:

Loretta will be pleased to know that we can add another Peruvian restaurant to our repertoire.

Aside from that, I had some frozen grapes in the late afternoon, and some more tonight when I got home.