While I have never been to Peru before, I have been a fan of their food for a while, starting with ceviche and obviously their roast chicken. But you actually don't see a lot of Peruvian restaurants around town - so I was intrigued when I read about this place which was a <10 -="" and="" apt.="" decor="" from="" gorgeous="" huge="" in.="" is="" light="" lots="" min="" modern="" my="" nbsp="" of="" pouring="" space="" span="" the="" very="" walk="" windows="" with="">
It is one of the hotter restaurants on the scene now, so it took me over 2 weeks to get a reservation on a weekend that was at a decent time - ok, it was 6pm on a Saturday but that's better than 10pm or 5pm. Even though I knew it was hard to get a reservation, I was still shocked by how incredibly crowded it was at 6pm - almost every table was taken already. The menu is all shareable and is broken out veggies, fish, meat and large format dishes (there were only 2 options, either the whole roasted chicken or the beef tenderloin) as well as some anticucho which are basically skewers. Paige and I opted to get the pork belly anticucho ($5), the ceviche ($18) and the large format beef tenderloin ($48). As you can see from the prices, they are a wee bit high for what they are. The pork belly skewers were as what you would expect - fatty, meaty and juicy. There were 3 skewers that came with pickled chilis and spicy mayo. They were a nice start to the meal. The ceviche was a corvina fish (similar to a croaker or mild white fish) served thin with plantains, habanero, red onion and cilantro. There was tons of acid and sourness to this dish, which I actually don't mind but it was very prominent. I usually like my ceviche with cubes of fish - these were sliced very thin and was more like a carpaccio dish then ceviche but not a real deal breaker to the overall dish.
As for the star attraction - the beef tenderloin dish came out and Paige and I were both like WTF did we just order? I had read about it on The Infatuation, so I was prepared that it would be this crazy dish but it didn't really prepare me for it when I saw it in person. It is basically a heaping sizzling plate full of cuts of beef tenderloin marinated in soy sauce topped with freakin FRENCH FRIES and covered in a spicy mayo type sauce and then served with scallion pancakes on the side so that you can wrap them all into a mini taco of sorts. They they also serve fresh sliced avocado and pickled chilis for you to garnish the dish with. It was all sorts of crazy - who tops a dish with french fries? But you know what? It was heart stoppingly deliciousness and apparently it's some kind of national dish in Peru. I mean, you feel terrible afterwards when you've realized what you've eaten but the combination of sizzling beef, french fries with spicy sauce wrapped in a scallion pancake is kind genius. I was really pushing it at the end, but you can get 3 tacos each per person out of this and you'll still be left with french fries on the plate.
Despite this monstrosity of food, Paige and I still managed to order bread pudding for dessert and it was a very solid moist bread pudding. The only reason why I didn't give this place a higher review is that the service was super super slow. We waited forever on every aspect of our meal - getting our drinks ordered, ordering our main meal, to getting more drinks and getting the bill. The waiter was very nice but the meal just took way longer than it needed to. It's definitely a lovely addition to the Williamsburg neighborhood, hopefully they can get their service in check a bit! Total bill: $100/pp with tax, tip and lots of wine
Photo Credit: Yelp
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