Petit Peru Resto Bar
349 Dalhousie St., upstairs, in the same space as La Diskoteka, 613-562-9756, petitperu.com
Open: Sunday and Tuesday, 11:30 a.m. to 7 p.m., Wednesday and Thursday, 11:30 a.m. to 8 p.m., Friday and Saturday, 11:30 a.m. to 9 p.m., closed Monday
Prices: Entrées from $16 to $19, ceviche from $17 to $26
Access: Fight of stairs to restaurant
Jorge Bahamonde’s first restaurant shares space with a Hull corner store. His second is almost like a pop-up, serving lunch and dinner before its second-storey Dalhousie Street location switches into night-time, Latin dance-club mode as La Discoteka.
Either way, it’s worth visiting one of Bahamonde’s Petit Peru eateries for the best of his unique and often vibrantly sauced dishes.
There are some caveats. The tiny, ultra-casual Hull location, L’ Epicerie Petit Peru on St-Raymond Boulevard, has just a handful of tables and its cutlery and plates are plastic. The ByWard Market outpost called Petit Peru Resto Bar, which opened in late June and replaced Los Tacos de Mauro, has real knives, forks and plates, but still feels like a nightclub pressed into service as a restaurant. Speaking of service, it can be a little short-staffed and sluggish, although waitstaff, which have included Bahamonde himself at my visits, have been friendly and multi-lingual.
Jorge Bahamonde from Petit Peru Resto Bar on Dalhousie St. in Ottawa poses with a plate of Anticuchos Thursday September 11, 2014.
But much can be forgiven if you have are a fan of, say, ceviche or roast chicken.
Bahamonde’s ceviches are the real deal. On Dalhousie Street, he serves five generously portioned kinds (from $17 to $26) in large, square plates, from a traditional base model featuring tilapia to a deluxe version that adds scallops, calamari, shrimp and even morsels of deep-fried seafood.
The ceviches I’ve tried teemed with vivid flavours thanks to lime-juice baths spiked with punchy Peruvian limon peppers, spices, cilantro and red onions. Also, Peruvian corn cooked two ways provided taste and textural contrast to the yielding raw fish.
Ceviche at Petit Peru Resto Bar.
Other great raw deals at Petit Peru Resto Bar included Leche de Tigre ($9), a mug filled with distilled ceviche broth goodness and tilapia chunks, hold the onions, as well as tiraditos ($16), which presented tilapia slices swimming in purely Peruvian sauces. The intriguing heat of aji amarillo chili-based sauce and the spicier-still rocoto chili sauce both worked well. I’ve yet to try the parmesan sauce. It breaks the old cheese-with-fish rule, but who knows?
Tiradito in rococo sauce by Jorge Bahamonde from Petit Peru Resto Bar on Dalhousie Street.
Raw fish aside, you could be very pleased with the best of Petit Peru’s other options too.
Bahamonde’s empanadas ($4 each), filled with expertly seasoned beef or chicken and served with tangy, mustardy Huacatay (black mint) sauce, must be among the best stuffed savoury pastries in Ottawa.
Beef Empanada at Petit Peru Resto Bar.
Alternately, there were causas — layered, ring-molded creations that stacked a star ingredient on layers of avocado and smooth, seasoned, cold mashed potatoes. The tres causas platter ($16) offered three to choose among, and a minced seafood causa topped its tuna- and beef-based rivals.
Tres Causas (seafood, tuna and beef) at Petit Peru Resto Bar.
Rotisserie chicken, available quartered ($10), halved ($17) or whole ($33), was consistently a triumph, moist and deeply flavoured from a day of marinating. Accompanying it were Huacatay sauce, house mayo, and Peruvian-style twice-fried potatoes, which were delicious piping hot, but which degraded into stodgy, starchy batons if they lingered and cooled.
Rotisserie chicken at Petit Peru Resto Bar.
Chicharrón ($16) consisted of a heap of sliced, fried pork loin, sweet potato, marinated red onions and small warmed buns with which to make sandwiches. At first sight, the pork scanned as off-puttingly dry, but in its sandwich-y embrace, its seasoning and crisp exterior mattered most.
Chicharron at Petit Peru Resto Bar.
Two dishes nodded to the influence of Chinese immigrants on Peruvian cooking. Lomo saltado ($16) was a hearty stir-fry of rugged beef with tomatoes and onions.
Lomo Saltado at Petit Peru Resto Bar.
Chaufa rice ($13 or $14), a fry-up that involved rice with bits of omelette and chicken, fish, beef or seafood, was pleasantly gingery.
Tilapia Fried Rice at Petit Peru Resto Bar
If these dishes aren’t on-the-edge enough for non-Peruvian expats, then there’s the marinated, grilled offal — mollejitas (chicken gizzards, $8) or anticuchos (beef heart, $9). I skipped these during my recent visits, but I’ve eaten the anticuchos at the Hull Petit Peru, and they were tangy and even reminiscent of flank steak.
Anticuchos at Petit Peru Resto Bar.
Drinks here can be exotic, ranging from a potent pisco sour to special flax seed beverages to imported Peruvian soft drinks to chicha morada, a brew made with purple corn and pineapple, to three pricey tropical juice blends.
But as far as sweet cravings go, I recommend the shareable dessert sampler ($10), which ends a meal nicely with homey yet decadent torta tres leches, a vanilla cake with three kinds of milk (evaporated, condensed and heavy cream), a slice of pionono, a rolled sponge cake with dulce de leche (caramelized condensed milk), and alfajores, sugar-powdered, dulce-de-leche-stuffed shortbread cookies. The desserts are available separately too.
Three desserts (Tres Leches Cake, Pionono sponge cake and Alfamajores) at Petit Peru Resto Bar
Petit Peru’s menu now in place (I’m told it will be updated soon) lists four sushi-roll-like items that combine tempura-fried seafoods or other items with Bahamonde’s sauces. He told me they just weren’t selling, and now will only available on selected Sundays. Other Sunday menus will feature different Peruvian specials as Bahamonde goes deeper into his homeland’s eclectic cuisine.
So, Ottawa’s first Peruvian restaurant serves unfamiliar fare in an odd setting. But don’t be dissuaded. There are flavourful, filling and even revelatory meals in store.
phum@ottawacitizen.com
twitter.com/peterhum
