Hidden treasure: Peruvian restaurants in Southern California

Ricardo Zarate remembers reading a 2004 article in the Economist magazine predicting that Peruvian cuisine was the Next Big Thing. A Peruvian who had studied at a culinary college in Peru, then at Westminster Culinary College in England, he was cooking in a Japanese restaurant in London. The moment he read the article, he knew it was right: Peruvian was the next big thing, and he wanted, desperately, to cook Peruvian in his own restaurant. He started dreaming and moved to L.A. in 2007.

This spring, Zarate opened Mo-Chica in the Mercado La Paloma, a Mexican marketplace, at least partly because there was no Perutown in Los Angeles.

"I've been in Los Angeles for two years, and I still don't know where the Peruvian community is," Zarate says jokingly.

The Peruvian community in Los Angeles is large but scattered, and Peruvian restaurants are mostly solitary creatures, with none of the visible concentration of Koreatown or Thai Town. Most of them are hidden too: in the back corners of strip malls, behind 7-Elevens and Radio Shacks, on anonymous stretches of streets in the outer reaches of the San Fernando Valley. This may be why a lot of Angelenos have no idea that they're surrounded by fantastic Peruvian food.

The menus are similar to one another: a march of saltados, fried rice dishes, ceviches and Latin soups. And potato dishes, lots of potato dishes. Because Peruvian food is inherently multicultural, there's something for any eater to relate to. There are Chinese ingredients, Japanese techniques, African flavors, laid over a foundation of Latino and Andean cooking. Peruvian food might be the only cuisine that combines cheese, nuts, soy sauce, cilantro and fried plantain all in the same bite.

But Peruvian is a nuanced cuisine, and every dish bears the unmistakable mark of its master -- whether it's beefy anticuchos (grilled skewers) in Norwalk at Anticucheria Danessi or the crisp-succulent roasted chicken at Bonano's in Northridge.

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Traditional, and not

The two new, strikingly great Peruvian restaurants in Los Angeles are Mo-Chica and Puro Sabor. One-year-old Puro Sabor is the proud upholder of traditional cooking, and Mo-Chica is the first major step in the direction of the new.

Mo-Chica's Zarate is a professionally trained innovator, serving carefully plated food with distinct Japanese touches -- varnished wooden serving trays, pristine white tableware, carefully arranged piles of fresh pickles. (Zarate formerly was chef at Zu Robata in West Los Angeles.)