Picca Peru Freshens Up with Carrot Habanero Air, Peruvian Fish 'n Chips

Making a Dante Bellpepper cocktail at Picca Peru

So many restaurants forget that it might be a good idea to freshen up the menu every so often. Not so at Ricardo Zarate's Picca Peru, which adds new dishes and even more imaginative cocktails several times a year so its still-enthusiastic diners won't get bored.

New look:

The upstairs mezzanine area has been bedazzled with a gold tile ceiling and twinkly lights. It's still a bit cramped up there, but the tiny bar and seating area are handy for private events or when it's even more crowded downstairs.

Among the new dishes: 

Fish 'n chips, Peruvian style: Tender filets of the giant Peruvian Paiche fish are fried up with a savory dipping sauce and served with homemade sweet potato chips.
Paiche with dried potatoes: pan roasted paiche, papa seca risotto, aji panca tomato sauce  (unusual and delicicious!)
Glazed lamb chops: gochuchang marinade and aji amarillo miso give them an Asian-meets-Peruvian vibe

new tuna causa

Spicy tuna causa: A pretty and delicious bite of tuna on a smooth potato bed
Ceviche: There's already plenty of variations on ceviche, but Zarate is always trying out new combos, with paiche, salmon, tuna and Madagascar prawn joining the various raw preparations.
Papa rellena: Potato stuffed with truffle-braised chicken
Alfajores: We didn't get to try

these but I love these Peruvian shortbread cookies sandwiched with dulce de leche so I'm going to have to go back and try them.

New cocktails include:

The Dante Bellpepper cocktail: If you've become jaded from too many sweet or boring drinks, here's something a little different: vegetal, spicy, and rather challenging in a gazpacho-meets-booze kind of way, it includes Mezcal, lemon, red bell pepper, agave, carrot habanero air and cracked pepper.
Sherry Manilow: Oloroso sherry, pomegranate molasses, cinnamon syrup, lemon, brandy. A cocktail for a proper lady who gets a little crazy now and then. My favorite of the bunch
Fig old-fashioned: A stiff, autumnal, well-balanced drink.

Picca's new fall menu: Why you should put aside prejudice and order a sweet potato cocktail right now

Caigua (Peruvian cucumber), stuffed with beef, raisins and feta

Picca chef Ricardo Zarate has come up with a swath of new menu items, despite being busy with the more-recently opened Mo-Chica downtown and plans for a new restaurant, Paiche, in Marina del Rey. Even though Picca is nearly always buzzy and full, it seems like a fine idea to freshen up the menu at the year-and-a-half old Pico Ave. Peruvian spot.

Sweet potato sour

When a restaurant opens or debuts new menu items, the food blogger scrum at the table can get a bit ridiculous. The food cools, enormous lenses swing around the table, iPhones lights are deployed in low-light situations. And then the L.A. food blogosphere reverberates with the sound of many similar meals. Here's Caroline on Crack's photo-intensive tour of our dinner. We can only be grateful her camera was pointed at the guy in the cap instead of the frowsy blogger next to him.

lobster tartare, mango, yuca chips

But since Picca opened, it's been the kind of restaurant where you make a point of getting there even when you or a friend are actually paying for your own meal, so I feel justified in recommending you stop by for a cocktail with a breath of fall and some causas, ceviches and anticuchos (grilled skewered meats).
The cocktails, as always, are stand-outs. Picca's Pisco Sour is always excellent, but it's fall, and I recommend putting aside fears of sweet or murky cocktails and ordering the Sweet Potato Sour. I know, potatoes in cocktails, ew, right? Nope, this one is perfectly balanced, with aged rum, brown sugar, honey, egg white, and just enough sweet potato to clue you in to what you're drinking without going anywhere near the liquified-pie aspect you might suspect.

Causas of spicy albacore, lobster and tricolore with burrata and tomato

I loved the other two we tried almost as much: Pants Down incorporated one of my favorite flavors, apricot, melding apricot brandy, lemon, Aperol, soda water and Cochi Americano aperitif into a refreshing Indian summer cooler. And Cold War Kids is the ideal fall cocktail for those who are still dubious of sweet potato: cognac, sherry, lime and Pisco brandy meet Vietnamese cinnamon syrup for a restrained yet potent holiday feeling.

Lengua with red potato crisps

Don't worry, much of the old menu remains intact. But the new items provide even more reason to go back to Picca if you haven't been there for a while. I usually concentrate mostly on the seafood items - I love the Peruvian style of ceviche, and the scallops with uni were a sensual pleasure. The half lobster with garlic bechamel, paiche fish teriyaki, branzino with huacatay butter and octopus with twice-cooked potato were all worth checking out. I wasn't as taken with the insistently chewy skewered gizzard as some people were, but the tender braised ox tongue (Anticucho lengua) would be enough to change any tonguephobic's mind. Caigua was similar to a stuffed Mexican chili dish but made with the unusual Peruvian vegetable from the cucumber family. Here's to freshening up the menu -- let's toast with a sweet potato cocktail!
Picca Peru
9575 W. Pico Blvd.
Beverly Hills
310-277-0133

Mo-chica's grand opening downtown is today: Alpaca si, guinea pig comes later

Peruvian chef Ricardo Zarate's Mo-chica seemed like a wonderful  find when it opened in Mercado la Paloma south of Downtown three years ago. Zarate was quickly hailed as a talent to watch, and for a while Mo-Chica remained, if not a foodie secret, at least somewhat under-the-radar with its early closing and no-alcohol policies. Then Zarate quickly shot to the top of L.A.'s food scene when he opened the ambitious Picca in Beverly Hills. Now Mo-chica too has grown up, moving from the folksy Mercado to an industrial chic space with a full-bar across from Mas Malo on Seventh St. It's bittersweet in a way, since the sense of a find and maybe a deal too has been lost, but longer hours and a more central location certainly allows many more people to experience Zarate's always on-point cooking, now with delicious cocktails from Brian Summers and Deysi Alvarez. We were invited to sample quite a few dishes from the new menu, which is a bit more compact and casual than Picca's, but with still with plenty of creative Peruvian flavors. Here's a few highlights:

Oaxacalifornia Love, left: mezcal, blanco tequila, pineapple-rocoto; , lime juice and Tha Doggfather, a potent and tangy Pisco sour

ANTICUCHO DE PULPO: grilled octopus, roasted potatoes, jalapeno sauce

CEVICHE MIXTO: halibut, prawns, scallops, squid, red onion, rocoto, leche de tigre, camote

ALPACA ESTOFADO alpaca stew estofado, tagliatelle, aji amarillo sauce, fried organic fertile egg

What does alpaca taste like, you ask? Not as funky as most goat, closer to an earthy beef than to meats in the lamb/goat family. The piquant sauce cuts the earthiness and the fried egg. 

SOLTERITO salad: lima beans, choclo, feta, olives, English peas, queso fresco, rocoto vinaigrette

An odd combo of incredients, and the pea leaves (?) were hard to eat. But the olives, feta, potatoes, corn and peas all played very nicely together.

SANGRESITA: morcilla crostini, fried egg, jalapeno salsa

Not my favorite of the dishes: I've got nothing against blood sausage, but it wasn't a crostini you could pick up like an appetizer, but rather resting on soft bread with a lot of sauce. Just didn't work as a knife and fork dish. (Also, Peruvians really like huevos, but be careful or you could end up with a lot of fried eggs.)

PAICHE: Amazonian fish, ajiaco de arroz, cherry tomato escabeche

Paiche is an Amazon river fish with a meaty texture and mild swordfish-like flavor. Paired with a deeply flavored saucy rice and vibrant cherry tomatoes, it's filling enough to be a main course and very satisfying.

Sol y sombra  creme brulee with fruits

 Our dessert was the fruitiest creme brulee ever, which was a good thing. Though I love a solid dish of cream -- who wouldn't -- this was lightened up with purple corn, pineapple, apples, apricots and raisins. Served in an adorable enamel mini-bathtub, I could have eaten one the size of a baby's bathtub.
Mo-chica
514 W. 7th Street (@ Grand) 
Los Angeles
213-622-3744

Hours
Sun.-Sat. 11:30a-3:30p (lunch)
5:30-11p (dinner)
 
 

Peruvian primer: Mas Mo-chica

Mo-chica's refined lomo saltado, with a sauce that's more French than Chinese.

After my first time at Mo-chica I thought I should do some research on Peruvian food, since up until then, I found it a bit lacking in variety and flavor. But the quality of Mo-chica's food has made me hope they will keep introducing new specials so we can get an wider array of Peruvian specialties. I found there are hundreds of dishes that we normally don't see at L.A. Peruvian restaurants, including dozens of desserts beyond the admittedly delicious alfajores cookies.Peruvian ceviche is served with sweet potato, toasted corn and seaweed. This special of scallop ceviche packed a chile wallop. Mo-chica's owner Ricardo Zarate formerly worked at top sushi bars.

Mo-chica was unfortunately out of carob mousse, because I'm one of the few who actually appreciates the flavor of carob, a traditional Peruvian ingredient. I haven't tried Puro Sabor in Van Nuys, but I hear they have picarones, pumpkin donuts.
Lamb shank came with wonderful white canary beans stewed in a cilantro sauce -- they should offer them as a separate dish.

We also had the moist, well-spiced arroz con mariscos, a Peruvian take on paella, and a chicken special -- but the sparklingly fresh ceviches are what will keep me coming back, I think. That, and all the other specials we haven't tried yet -- pork belly, fried seabass, uni ceviche...and that carob mousse.

Mo-Chica Peruvian Restaurant
In Mercado La Paloma
3655 S. Grand Ave., L.A.
(213) 747-2141

Mo-chica: Feeling the Peruvian love

Potato salad of the day was bright yellow potatoes layered with crab meat and avocado.

For a while now, it's been bruited that Peruvian food is the NEXT BIG THING. I'm still not sure I buy it as a trend, because I still feel like there's a limit to what you can do with raw fish, potatoes and giant corn kernels. But then I probably said that about Vietnamese too, so what do I know?
In any case, Mo-chica, in the Mercado La Paloma food court (convenient to USC but south of Downtown), is taking these traditional ingredients as far as they can go with an expert hand at combining flavors. The menu is compact, but rotating specials keep things fresh. Since the other stands in the Mercado are closed in the evening, Mo-chica is fairly empty at night, but the marketplace buzzes at lunchtime.
Here's some of the uniformly bright, modern Peruvian dishes we tried:

Ceviche of the day was yellowtail, with a tart, complex dressing incorporating corn, onions and yams. A complementary grilled sardine amuse-bouche had a wonderfully sharp corn and bean-studded dressing.

Aji de Gallina is a stick-to-your-ribs chicken stew with bread sauce and walnuts. It's more of a winter dish, but Mo-chica's version had more going on than the version I had in San Francisco. Use one of the three salsas to provide another layer of flavor.

Salad of the day was a lively mix of barley, lettuce, and plantain fritters.

We also tried the unusual Chicha morada, a tea made from purple corn. The deeply-colored drink has a sweet, fruit taste similar to jamaica. All this came to just $30, which is pretty amazing for this quality of food -- they also use organic produce.
Mo-chica
3655 S. Grand Ave.
Los Angeles
213-747-2141

Running with the llamas: Los Balcones del Peru

camarones a la piedra
It seems like a veritable stampede of local food writers and Chowhound posters have made their way to Los Balcones del Peru lately, and I think a good part of the reason is that the Arclight-adjacent neighborhood desperately needed some reasonably-priced new restaurants. We were going to a play, not a movie, but it's a convenient location on the way to anything in Hollywood. When we arrived, it was empty, so surely service would be prompt, right?
I hadn't read Jonathan Gold's review first, but I managed to order the dish he raved about anyway, as it sounded like one of the more interesting dishes on the menu. Camarones a la piedra is called a "warm ceviche," but it doesn't really resemble a ceviche -- the shrimp swim in a bright yellow sauce vaguely reminiscent of hollandaise, made with amarillo peppers. The sauce has corn kernels in it, corn being a very Peruvian ingredient, and the shrimp are surrounded by batons of yuca. The whole thing is covered in finely sliced red onions. It was an interesting combination, definitely different from any other cuisine, yet it needed a lot of the spicy green aji sauce to really bring out the flavors.
Matt had the saltado mariscos, which was sauteed calamari, shrimp and tomatoes on a bed of french fries served with rice, and pronounced it excellent. The fries I stole were indeed tasty. Some of the dishes have combinations that sound rather odd -- there were a few that combined bananas, eggs, steak or chicken and potatoes, I think -- but it all makes for a good change from the typical Mexican or Brazilian menu.
They had a nice-looking flan for dessert, but we needed to make an 8:00 curtain, so I took one of the alfajores cookies to go. My car is now covered in a snowdrift of powdered sugar, but those things are amazing. Two nice big butter cookies enclose a thick layer of dulce de leche, but somehow the whole thing isn't too cloyingly sweet. One cookie is enough for two to share, though.
The verdict: The price was right ($33 for two entrees, three soft drinks and a giant cookie) and there are some interesting dishes I've never tried before. Unfortunately, the service was extremely slow and not particularly attentive -- it would have been nice to have more bread to sop up my yellow sauce, Matt's second soda didn't arrive until he was nearly finished, and I was never offered a refill on my iced tea. If you're trying to make a movie, it's probably a good idea to let them know as soon as you arrive. Still, it's good to have another option in the area.
Los Balcones del Peru
1360 N. Vine
(323) 871-9600

Taste test: Pollos a la Brasa

Here's another installment in my continuing series of places I really should have tried by now. We stopped by Pollos a la Brasa this weekend with the young'uns who will normally eat roast chicken, if not much else. The little stand on the corner of 8th and Western has a pleasant wood-burning scent wafting down the block. Inside, dozens of chickens turn over the wood-fired spit, several people wait for to-go orders, and a few of us cram into the few tables in back. We ordered a whole chicken with salad and fries, at about $12. It takes a little longer to prepare than Zankou, but what doesn't? The chicken is a lovely nut-brown beast, with a slightly spicy marinade and an ok, but not terribly moist interior. The house green sauce has only one taste note: pureed jalapenos. The kids pronounce the fries excellent, and indeed, they're some of the more tasty I've had lately.

Sam, chicken and fries
Sam and Matt are thumbs up on the chicken; Sophie perversely prefers the one I got from the Ralph's warming table last week, but she's picky.
Pluses: On my way home from work, good fries, nice skin. Overall a solid contender.
Minuses: Not sure the fries and salad are worth $4 more than Zankou's bird and pitas. Not to be stubborn, but I still prefer the moistness and garlicky skin at Zankou.
Pollos a la Brasa
764 S. Western
Los Angeles
Archived comments:
brian said...
Tough to compete with the garlic spread and anything at zankou. But then again, a tasty order of fries goes a long way too!
jimmypermo said...
My best roast chicken was the weekend-only King Taco roaster I had this weekend. Still a big Zankou fan, especially with all the condiments
Anonymous said...
They also have a location in the "Moneta" section of Gardena at 16527 South Vermont Avenue. It's north of Artesia Boulevard/91 and west of the 110. The telephone number is (310) 715-2494.