Delicious authentic Peruvian food and drinks! The pisco sour was one of the best I have had. We ordered small starter plates to share. We had the causushi, tamales, rocoto pepper, ceviche with peas and avocado and the tiradito. We had a side dish of cassava fritters with chimmichurri sauce.
Both the ceviche and tiradito were amazing in flavour. I found the fish a little tough and the pieces a little large, however my partner enjoyed it this way. I tend to prefer my ceviche soft and bitesize with the marinade coming through the flesh. It was still enjoyable. The authentic touches of the boiled white corn kernels and the crispy corn kernels was great, along with the crispy plantain chips on the side.
The tamale was great but could have done with a thicker, stronger and larger portion of huancaina sauce.
The causushi was a grower for both of us. It was a trio of flavoured mashed potato rolled into nori sheets, each topped with a different seafood. One was butterfly prawn, one was baby octopus and the third was muscle with pickled sushi ginger and shrimp. It was too big a starter for one person with all that potato and not enough seafood to be able to cut each I'm half an share. They would have done better to serve two of each in smaller pieces as a sharing plate. Each roll was served with a different mayonnaise drizzle to complement. In reality, there wasn't enough sauce to scrape from the plate so it was more for presentation. They would have done well to top with a more generous sauce portion or serve on the side.
The only thing that we regretted was ordering the rocoto. I have had stuffed pepper in Peru before. However, it was a large bell pepper and not a real rocoto pepper, even though it was called rocoto pepper. Little did we know that this little hidden gem in Islington would serve the real thing! I choked immediately on the spice of this Peruvian pepper. My other half handled ate his share, proceeded to eat mine and five minutes later started coughing when the chilli hit him. We both ordered a glass of milk to be able to finish our meal. This innocent looking red pepper is worse than a scotch bonnet! Had we been pre-warned we would not have ordered it.
All said and done, we had a good meal, the service was great, the flavours were brilliant and the portions were mostly just right for us to try a good number of dishes and fill ourselves up. Drinks were great too. We were too full to have dessert and hope to visit again soon and leave some room for the Peruvian donuts!