FAMILY IN TOWN!!! We’re so excited to have Natalie’s mom and aunt here in Lima for eight days! Yesterday, the four of us had our first full day together (Janet and Sue have had lots of great daytime adventures, and the four of us have had some great evening activities and dinners during the week, too), and it was chock full of good eats and drinks. I want to tell y’all about everything, but in the interest of brevity and narrative clarity, will focus on our lunch at La Picantería.

Is that a good lookin’ bunch or what?

La Picantería is the second Lima restaurant from the Peruvian chef Hector Solis, who focuses on Chiclayo, or Northern Peruvian, cuisine. As you might guess from the restaurant’s name, Chiclayo food is spicy. In general, Peruvian food relies heavily on ajís, or chilies. The same word is used for the pepper itself and the ubiquitous pastes and purees (sometimes combined with scallions, lime, and other ingredients, or sometimes fermented like US hot sauces) that both accompany most meals as a condiment and are ingredients in most dishes. The dishes at La Picantería were spicy-but-not-too-spicy, carefully balancing heat with acidity, salt, and sweetness. Food that makes you feel alive.

The main dining room of the restaurant is two long, communal tables, and the food is served in big casserole-like serving dishes, family style. The centerpiece of the menu is whole fish, served in three ways. It’s one of the coolest ideas I’ve ever seen at a restaurant. Your party orders a fish, priced by weight, then is served three communal dishes—a ceviche, a soup, and a pan fried filet—all made from the same fish. The restaurant was loud and my Spanish is bad, so I basically told the waitress to give us whatever fish she thought was good, and whatever amount. Great, great, great decision.

We ended up with a 1.35kg cabrillo, a kind of grouper (I can find it referred to as “leopard grouper” in English, but in general it doesn’t seem to be a fish we eat a lot of in the States). First, we had ceviche (duh). It was a much simpler leche de tigre (the marinating liquid for ceviche) than we’ve had at other places—not much more than lime juice and ají—but the fish was the star. It was so fresh and flavorful, really wonderful. As a dish, it was top five ceviches so far, but not number one. But it was maybe the best fish we’ve had in Lima. The little fried stuff on the side was fried slivers of fish skin, which I thought was just so dang cool. Definitely captured the spirit of the restaurant, and was delicious to boot.

Also, danger, that wasn’t a bell pepper. Oofta was it hot…

Next was a sudado, or soup, made with ají amarillo, a super flavorful but relatively mild chili. No joke, maybe the best thing I’ve eaten in Lima. Unreal. In general, ceviche is served with a caldo (fish broth) as an appetizer. The caldo is made using the leftover bones/heads/etc of the fish, and spiked with lime juice or leche de tigre, served with red onions and sometimes a few other crunchy garnishes. Sudado, in general, is similar to caldo but a little thicker and richer, often because of added ají. This soup. Oh wow. This soup. The carcass floating in there was mostly for show, I picked at it but there wasn’t a lot of meat, and the flavor had mostly cooked out into the broth. That broth though. Rich, spicy, tart, full of fish flavor without being fishy—unbelievable.

One of the best broths I’ve eaten. But like ever though.

Along with the sudado, we had a pan fried filet of cabrillo. We forgot to take a picture, so I grabbed a picture from a stranger off the internet. It more or less looked like this—crispy skinned fish (from the opposite side as the ceviche), on top of fried yuca and boiled sweet potato chunks, with a sauce which was, basically, a few ladlefuls of sudado broth (our dish had much more sauce than in this picture), plus a stick of butter and some garlic. It was not undelicious.

I know, not the artful photography you expect from Lima y Sal. Blame rando internet photographer.

It was just such an exciting and scrumptious way to share a whole fish. We are definitely, definitely going back.

Also forgot to snap a picture of some grilled scallops, which were served with little potato fritters and a salsa of very small diced red onion with ají and lime (the same ingredients as salsa criolla, which goes with basically everything, but with different knife cuts). They were super mega delicious, as well.

One of many reasons we need to return to La Picantería is to try their erizos (sea urchin). They had a huge blackboard advertising their amazing local sea urchin, and I’ve heard it’s a specialty of the restaurant, but they’d sold out by the time we arrived at two-ish. Lots of preparations available, but I hear the tortilla (which they use here to both describe a Spanish tortilla, really closer to a frittata, as well as any omelet) is amazing. OH WELL GUESS WE NEED TO GO BACK.

It’s a great atmosphere too, the communal tables meant that we chatted with folks on both sides of us (something I might normally find annoying, but it just felt right here—bonding through culinary jollification), and we didn’t feel for a minute like locals.

Another photo stolen from the internet…We were not the best documenters

As a contrast, Nat and I had a date night a few weeks ago at Fiesta, Hector Solis’ other Lima restaurant, and while the food was great (in particular a ceviche a la brasa—fish and erizo slow cooked over hot coals with ceviche flavors), the atmosphere was a little anemic. White table cloths, pushy waiters, and gringoes as far as the eye could see.

We are having just the best time with Janet and Sue. There is literally (literally) nothing I’d rather do than eat great food with people I love. Tuesday is dinner at Central, so stay tuned…