The 59 soles Criollo lunch buffet at the Casa Andina Private Collection hotel restaurant, Alma Cocina Viva, is not cheap, but that $25 CAD gets you a pretty amazing lunch. This is not Almazen, the charming organic vegetarian place on the other side of the Arequipa/Avenida Larco. It’s a lot more polished and hotel-like, serves meat, and is more about the business lunch than globally conscious eating.
You walk into a sunny room with a full spread of bite size snacks, from causitas (little balls of gently spiced mashed potato stuffed with avocado and chicken or shrimp salad), a selection of salsas (from a smile-inducing sweet and spicy salsa fresca chopped tomato version to traditional creamy aji amarillo and cilantro to accompany the olives, corn, and beautifully arranged spoonfuls of shrimp in salsa golf (creamy pink mayo spiked with mild chilies). There’s bread, because in Peru there’s always bread – the fluffy roll kind brought with the Spaniards – sweet pastries, mini corn tamales or humitas with chicken and pork, pasta from the Italians, and African-influenced tacu tacu, oil-heavy rice and beans. And apparently this all comes with a glass of chicha (fermented corn beer) or a pisco sour (pisco, lemon, sugar, egg white), but I didn’t get one.
The biggest draw of the buffet, however, is the ceviche made to order.
You choose from white fish (red snapper that day), shrimp, sea snails, pre-cooked scallops and dark mussels (only get the snails and mussels if you really like chewing – no really! Some people do!), squid rings, red onion, steamed sweet potato and corn, and the ceviche chef whips together a well-balanced lime, fresh red chili, cilantro and salt blend to marinate the fish.
The pre-cooked part is because it’s a buffet and things are sitting out at higher than ideal temperatures, and you’re not going to wait the 10 suggested minutes while your fish marinates and “cooks” in the lime juice (this is a food safety thing, but lots of people, including myself, eat fish raw. The bowls were sitting on ice, but I’d let the fish marinate a few minutes if you’re at all concerned about getting Lima belly gastro). Too bad about the pre-cooked, though, because the shrimp and mussels were tough. The red snapper was raw, though, and unfortunately it didn’t cook through as much as I like because I elected for the cubes of fish instead of the sashimi style tiradito cut. Snapper is tougher than corvinha – the traditional ceviche fish – or sole or flounder – the common replacements. But this is still good ceviche because of the lima-chili-salt balance, and you know it because the chef takes a spoonful of every marinade he makes and tries it before serving to make sure the balance is right. If it’s not, he adds more lime, salt or chili.
And since everything is made to taste, if your taste differs from his, it’s a quick adjustment. No waiting 10 minutes to send a dish back while your marinating fish overcooks (or cooks just enough…Besides making the fish safer to eat, it also tenderizes the flesh – very important if it’s snapper), if you dare to send it back at all. And you can go back for as much as you like (endless ceviche! Or until you’re too embarrassed to ask for more). You’d better stop sooner rather than later, though, because you maybe don’t know what’s coming next…
Thank goodness you’re still hungry after all that food! Because the second course is ready. This is where criollo cooking shines. It’s hearty, savoury food with simple ingredients (lots of starches – potatoes, yucca, rice) and sharp salsas to make the tongue tingle. Choose from a menu of mains including steamed fish in onion and tomato sauce, lomo saltado (stir-fried sliced steak with soy sauce, vinegar, chili and potatoes cut like french fries), aji de gallina (chicken with Parmesan, bread soaked in milk (to thicken the stew), boiled potatoes, rice, olives, and mild chili paste, and seared duck leg with cilantro rice (pato a la Chiclayata, I think). The duck leg was tougher than I’m used to, but I come from the land of duck confit. The Peruvian version isn’t supposed to be as tender, I don’t think, and I was glad for having less oozing fat, as delicious as that can be. The snapper tasted a little fishy, but wasn’t overcooked, which is a bigger concern for me when I don’t know exactly what the fish should taste like. Maybe the snapper was supposed to taste like that, like mackerel usually tastes fishy unless you brine it. At least the snapper wasn’t as strong a flavour as mackerel sometimes is.
Then you go back to the buffet for dessert, because you clearly haven’t had enough food yet – suspiro de limena, mazamorra morada sweetened mouth-staining thick purple corn gelatinous pudding with diced apples, and lots of petite sweets, pastries and chocolate to fill the empty crevices in your belly.
It’s not cheap, but service is amazing (every time I stood up my plate and napkin were gone and new ones placed, seemingly magically, by the time I returned), I got to try mini versions of two second courses (not even my suggestion, but a welcome one), and if you take your entree leftovers to go, you easily get two meals out of it, at least. Plus, because I’m lactose intolerant the chef made me a special dessert – two actually! One giant port meringue-only suspiro de limena without the dulce de leche cream base, and one mazamora morada warm sweetened corn jam-like pudding without the cream top.
I was on a sugar high for the rest of the day, and my tongue and lips were purple, but I was so happy to have had dessert that wasn’t fruit salad, and the two desserts together were like a hot pudding with spiked whipped cream, which is the closest I’ll get to heaven.
Alma Cocina Viva
Casa Andina Private Collection Hotel, Miraflores
www.almacocinaviva.com
511-213-4300
Where: Calle Diez Canseco 425, Miraflores, Lima
How much: 59 soles, including tax and tip
When: Wednesday, Thursday, Friday noon-3:30pm
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