Central Restaurante

OK, I get why some people have problems with 'gourmet' food... It's expensive. The restaurant employees are too full of themselves. The portions are small. Everything's got a story. They cook and eat weird things. I really do get it.

Well, we ate at Central Restaurante last night, and every one of those things happened.

It may have been my best dining experience ever.

The Pelligrino water people sponsor a list of The World's 50 Best Restaurants, and Central Restaurant finished at Number 50. I could walk there from my apartment, so I made a reservation.

It was expensive. The portions were not, ahem, large. Every dish (even the butters) came with a back story. We had no idea what the hell we were eating. I can't freaking wait to eat there again.

Dely and I get there right on time for our 10 pm reservation. The restaurant is full, but the hostess seats us at the last open table. Then it starts.

The service was NOT snotty. One day, songs will be sung about how good the service was. In no particular order:

• Water was sold by the (tiny) individual bottle. They poured for us, managed to use only half the bottle, and kept the rest of it in an ice bucket, and it made perfect sense.
• I ordered two appetizers for us to share, and they volunteered to split them and bring them in two courses. Both plates were created to appear as if they were individual orders.
• With the check, they bring a small assortment of tiny sweets to your table. Dely wanted to take home two or three of them... they were really tiny. The waiter brought her back a box with the full compliment of both of our sweets.
• For my first time ever, the waiter asked us if we had any allergies when we ordered.
• They never once acted like, "What is wrong with you? You're not drinking and spending even more money here."
• Our waiter never annoyed us, but whenever we needed something, he was magically there.
• When Dely went to the Ladies' Room, some manager came to crumb our table. There was a spot on the tablecloth where we had dropped something that we were passing to each other to taste. He went and got a six-inch square cloth patch to cover the spot.
• I could go on forever.

Right, this isn't a restaurant review blog. It's my food journal. But the place was beyond awesome. I waited until I slept off the euphoria to see if I still feel that way. I do. So, here's what we ate.

Peru has very distinct and different eco-cultures... there's the Coast, the Mountain Region, the Jungle, and they've got a Desert here. Each has its own offshoots, and each has different types of food. Central Restaurant, er, represents, all of these areas in their various dishes.

The bread came first. Each of the three breads were explained to us, as was the butters, the sauce and the oil for dipping. I wasn't taking notes, so I can't tell you where the breads were from or what made them special, but they were all from somewhere, and each had a different taste and consistency. I had the  larger one and one of the darker, heavier ones. The darker of the butters was garlic-laden, and I couldn't figure out what went into the lighter butter, but Dely really liked it.

Our first appetizer was Atun Confit de 6 Grados.

When they delivered this plate, it had a story. I didn't understand it, and chalked it up to my lack of Spanish skills. But Dely was totally confused, too, and she's from here. So I didn't feel so bad.

For lack of a better explanation, this was a Tuna Carpaccio. It was fresh, it was delicious. The decorative stuff on the top of the plate wasn't decorative. It was some soft cheese topped with some sweet, jelly-like item. The stuff to the left was shredded radish, I think. In what will be a recurring statement, my plate was empty when they cleared the dishes. Dely's, too.

 

Our second appetizer was Lineas de Conchas (lines of scallops).

From left to right: Tuna (again -- who knew?), a White Fish, a cut up Ahi Amarillo (yellow pepper - Dely figured that out), and Scallops. They poured a ceviche-like sauce over the scallop section after the dishes were delivered. We wound up mixing and matching the combinations of fish and the pepper. It was wonderful. We both finished the entire plate. Mine was gone first. Here's Dely with her scallop dish.

I'm leaving things out. Like how good the server was. How -- when I asked for ice for my six-ounce bottle of $5 water, he lovingly selected each ice cube individually, and how he kept the second half of my bottle of water waiting for me in an ice bucket. How -- in a move that Miss Manners would approve of -- the waiter allowed me to place our order. If he had a question about how Dely wanted something, he asked me and waited patiently while I asked her, got her answer, had her repeat her answer, and then told him. He answered her questions directly, but wouldn't presume to overstep and address my companion uninvited. And I'm not going on and on and on and on and on about the eleven chefs doing stuff in the open kitchen. But I could.

Our main dishes arrive. I had asked for the Cordero Camomilla. I know that cordero is lamb, and the menu kind of explained what went into the dish (they offered me an English menu, but I was showing off and told them that the Spanish one would be fine), but I ordered it because, well, I wanted lamb.

First off, I had absolutely no idea what the stuff on the right-hand side of my plate was. It had foam, but... no clue. It was good, whatever it was. The Cordero was a nice sized hunk of meat. I don't know which cut, but it had a lamb taste, broke apart with my fork, and the sauce was tasty. I was able to identify, however, the side dish. It was mashed potatoes. Figured it out all by myself. I ate the entire plate.

Dely had ordered the Corvina Negra. Corvina is a white fish, so she was intrigued as to how and why it was 'black.'

 

As you can see, the 'negra' was some sort of topping on the fish. It wasn't crunchy, and we couldn't figure out what it was. We had kind of given up on understanding why and where each dish came from, and we just went with the flow. Perhaps on future visits, it will all come together, but we were out of our league, knowledge-wise. I tasted the fish, and it was cooked perfectly. According to Dely, the small white cubes on the plate were (her words) apple-flavored gelatin. Her side dish won our award for Best Item.

Ladies and Gentlemen, your winner

This was Rice and Scallops. But not your standard Peruvian Cebicheria Rice and Scallops. Oh no. I'm sure that was Peruvian from somewhere. This was absolutely incredible. Each grain of rice was perfectly seasoned and better than its neighbor, and the scallops tasted like they went and pulled them out of the ocean when we placed our order. Peruvians can get pretty blase about their scallops -- they're everywhere, and fairly cheap -- but this was something special. She ate the entire plate.

We ordered dessert. Kind of by default, as one of the only things we understood on the menu, we asked for the cheesecake.

Ok, here's the rundown: Little squares of cheesecake. Some orange fruit topping. Whipped Cream. And -- the yellow stuff housing it... Pineapple Ice Cream. Or maybe Pineapple Sherbert. Pineapple Something. Cheesecake: Excellent. Whipped Cream: That, too. Pineapple Something: Worth getting on a plane for. If you could walk in and say, "Give me a bowl of the rice and scallops. Chase that with a vat of the pineapple something. And keep it coming. Here's my credit card," life would be good.

And to make it better, after he delivered the cheesecake, he returned with a bowl of (I think) mint leaves floating in warm water. He them popped in a cube of dry ice, and minty smoke graced our table.

 

We were staring at this spectacle kind of in the way I imagine people looked at Moses when he descended with the commandments. The waiter came back and -- incredibly gently -- let us know that the smoke was for effect only. It was touch and go there for a minute. Here's Dely marveling at the wonder of it all.

It's not over yet. I asked for the check, and perhaps to soften the blow, they give you an assortment of sweets.

In front, those are flavored marshmallows. The purple ones were chicha morada (a popular soft drink here made from purple corn), the yellow were flavored with agarrobina (a liquor here), and I don't remember the third. The chocolates were very dense chocolate, with 35% and 40% cacao. The top item is a story all on its own.

The cubes were Pisco Sour (a popular cocktail) flavored. I have never had one, but Dely confirmed the flavor. The dots on the right were white chocolate, and the other dots were some other chocolate. But the real event here is the rock they were served on. It was freaking edible. There were some crumbs on Dely's chocolate dot, and she then broke off a small piece of the rock and popped it into her mouth. OK, now we were literally able to eat the plate. I was on flavor overload by this point, and was done asking questions, so I chipped off a little, enjoyed the sugar, and handed the guy my credit card.

This was absolutely fabulous. In a land where just about everything that you eat is outstanding, Central Restaurante takes the cake. I eat out a lot, and was slightly put off by the $5 glass of water and the apparent 'gourmet-ness' of the place, but by the end, the only real reason that we left was because it was midnight, and they were done bringing us food. The one other Peruvian restaurant on that Top 50 list is Astrid y Gaston, and I'm already sold on them. I can only imagine how good the other 48 are.