The red snapper in the ceviche at Pezcalato, the new Peruvian restaurant on Richmond, is so soft, I wonder if it’s been ground up like hamburger meat. And I can’t figure out what the bright white shreds mixed into the fish could be. So I call the waitress over and take a guess. Is this the white part of a hard-boiled egg? I ask her.
“No, that’s calamari,” she says. I have never tasted seafood this tender in ceviche. But then, I have never had Peruvian ceviche before.
In a Houston Tex-Mex restaurant, ceviche means rubbery chunks of “mystery fish” in a lime juice marinade. You eat it with the guacamole and the tortilla chips as an appetizer. And I had always been quite happy with the local version. But I think Pezcalato is going to spoil me.
You have to specify your fish when you order it here. There’s grouper or snapper ceviche for $14 a plate. Tilapia or catfish ceviche is $12. All are served Peruvian-style with a slice of cold cooked sweet potato and a little round of cold cooked corn on the cob.
“Get the snapper,” the manager says as he stops by our table on the way to the kitchen. “It mixes best with the marinade.” The fish comes to the table combined with octopus, squid and mussels with red onion slices on top. Judging by the falling-apart texture, I suspect the octopus and squid are cooked a little before they’re marinated. Flecks of a fresh green herb coat the seafood. The waitress explains that the stuff is cilantro, which has been ground so finely, it resembles a pesto. It’s by far the best ceviche I have ever eaten.
Pezcalato is in a shopping center on Richmond that’s home to several other South American eateries. And like the other restaurants around here, Pezcalato is decorated in a homey style. There’s a giant photo of Machu Picchu hung on the wall along with some amateurish paintings and a hokey array of ceramic fish tacked up around a framed mirror.
Industrial chairs and tables are mixed up with home dining-room furniture to create an eccentric blend that looks like a cross between a residence and a restaurant. The mom-and-pop attitude is also evident in the service, which is friendly, if slightly inept. Your water glass doesn’t get refilled often, but the beautiful young Colombian woman who waits on you is friendly — provided you speak Spanish.
When she fails to understand me, I resort to pointing at the menu to order the entrée called pescado en salsa a lo macho. It’s a grilled fish fillet topped with a “spicy sauce” containing shrimp, octopus, squid, clams and mussels. As with the ceviche, the price depends on which fish you select. I go with the salmon, at $14. Unfortunately, the sauce is not as spicy as advertised, nor is it particularly flavorful. Without any unifying sense of taste, the seafood mélange is just a pleasant garnish on the slightly overdone grilled salmon.
My dining companion gets cau cau de mariscos, a variation on a pre-Hispanic Peruvian stew. The original version of cau cau is tripe stew mixed with crushed potatoes. In cau cau de mariscos, a seafood stew is substituted for the tripe. Squid, shrimp, mussels, octopus and their cooking liquid are mixed with potatoes and green peas and an herb mixture that includes mint. The seafood stock is thickened by the potatoes and forms a delicious and unusual sauce.
First cultivated by the ancient Incas, potatoes are a mainstay of Peruvian cuisine. I didn’t get a chance to try causa limena, a favorite summer appetizer in Peru. It’s essentially a cold mashed-potato pie topped with layers of meat or fish and salad ingredients like tomatoes and avocado. According to the menu, Pezcalato’s version features spicy mashed potatoes, chicken breast, mayonnaise and herb-seasoned vegetables.
On my second visit, I can’t resist ordering another plate of ceviche. I try the grouper, which is a little tougher than the snapper, but still exceptional. For an entrée, I order pescado con salsa camarones, with catfish as the fish. The breaded and fried fish comes topped with big plump shrimp cooked in a wine-and-cream sauce with green beans, carrots and fried yellow potatoes, as well as a side bowl of perfectly cooked rice. The fish in shrimp cream sauce is tasty, but it’s extremely rich. I’ll appreciate this kind of seafood in heavy sauce better when the weather gets colder — say six months or so from now.
The other entrée I sample is jalea, and it features deep-fried fish, squid, mussels, clams, shrimp and calamari in an enormous football-shaped jumble atop an oval platter. At the bottom of the pile are big deep-fried pieces of the potatolike tuber called yuca. The seafood is coated with a corn-based batter before being deep-fried. Strangely, the clams and mussels have been battered and fried in their partially opened shells.
On top of the jalea, there’s a garnish of cilantro-coated red onions and a bunch of curious-looking seeds I mistake for pine nuts. They turn out to be crispy kernels of corn that taste like the unpopped “old maids” found at the bottom of a bowl of homemade popcorn. It’s a fascinating plate of fried seafood. But like a typical American, I crave some sort of sauce on the side to dip the pieces of fish into.
Pezcalato is a wonderful introduction to a South American cooking style that is seldom seen in Houston. Potatoes and ceviche are probably the most famous foods that originated in this part of the world, and predictably, Pezcalato does both well. If you love potatoes, you’re in for a treat here. Eleven dishes on the 15-item menu feature either potatoes or yuca, including the beef strips, which are served with “freedom fries.”
As for the seafood, while shrimp and squid appear on the menu at Pezcalato, they themselves aren’t featured in any dishes. Evidently, in that part of South America, people prefer shrimp and squid as part of a seafood blend called a mixto. There are four dishes on the menu that feature one seafood mixto or another, including the spectacular ceviche mixto.
Popcorn, unpopped popcorn and the roasted hominy kernels we know in the United States as corn nuts are all popular snacks and garnishes in northern Peru and neighboring Ecuador. Both countries also claim to be the birthplace of ceviche.
Of course, the pre-Hispanic peoples of the region deserve much of the credit for these ancient potato, corn and seafood recipes. Incas used potatoes in all colors, shapes and sizes. And raw fish were marinated with acidic fruits and herbs on the Pacific coast of South America long before the conquistadors arrived.
But we can thank the Spanish for introducing citrus. Citrus juice is the perfect ingredient for a preparation in which the fish is cooked entirely by the acids in the marinade. Whether it’s lemon juice, sour Seville orange juice or lime juice, nearly all modern ceviches contain some kind of citrus. And in Peru, the juice left over in the bottom of a bowl of ceviche is considered a delicacy in itself. Known as tiger’s milk, it’s often poured into a shot glass. Whether taken straight or mixed with a little vodka, it’s said to be the perfect hangover cure.
If you love ceviche, you need to try Pezcalato’s Peruvian version. It’s rather expensive, but the portion is huge. It may be listed as an appetizer, but I intend to make a meal out of it in the future. Unfortunately, Pezcalato isn’t open for breakfast, but you can stop by and try the tiger’s milk cure if your hangover isn’t gone by 11:30 or noon.
This article appears in Jun 3-9, 2004.