Picca By Chef Ricardo Zarate

After fighting 5 o’clock traffic from the valley to a western corner of Los Angeles, we arrived at a large red building adorned with an outline of a large bull and the word “Picca” written across it. The impact of the presence of such a largely stated vibrant building, amongst a Ralphs shopping center and a CVS, says something before you even open the door to walk in. Picca is a Peruvian inspired eatery, where a mix of people from the modern chic and stylishly trendy comes to play and eat with small plates as a focal point in all the other well-played details.

 

As we approached the front desk, we were assured our table would be ready when our party was complete and since you never can guess when everyone in a group will arrive due to traffic and what not, we were given cocktail menus and pointed in the direction of the bar. The bar is a brightly lit and well-stocked centerpiece at Picca. The drink menu is full of delightfully different liquors such as pisco cocktails. Pisco is a grape brandy made by wine makers in the wine regions of Peru and Chile.  We ordered a variety of delicious drinks and finished getting them by the time our guests had all arrived.

Picca was offering a dineLA menu during this July dineLA Restaurant Week. I’ve had the pleasure of eating at the Bazaar during dineLA so when the opportunity for another great multi-course meal with incredible people came up, of course I jumped at the opportunity.  A group of us: my brother, Kyle; sister-in-law, Linh; one of my oldest friends, Nathalie; and our friends, Kathryn and Stephanie; all went out to taste some of Peru’s finest flavors.  dineLA menus are structured to have a multitude of choices. At Picca, we were able to choose two appetizers, two entrees and one desert. With the six of us dining together, we were pretty much able to get everything on the menu, minus a couple of dishes that we weren’t very interested in.

I love the stark flavors and pungent accents of Peruvian food. The use of sour, hot, salt and sweet is so interesting and at Picca, masterfully inspired and executed.  Out of the 10 appetizers selections available, we chose the following eight.

This ceviche is unlike Mexican ceviche. The sea bass is cut into large cubes and marinated in a pink sour, almost creamy, sauce called rocoto leche de tigre. Rocoto is a type of chili, which gave a little subtle heat to the ceviche. The leche de tigre is creamy partially due to the acid break down of the fish proteins. The ceviche is served with a small hunk of sweet potato, large kernels of corn like hominy and Peruvian nuts. The red onions and microgreens in the ceviche gave freshness. The combination of flavors was really delectable.

A large piece of toast was grilled and topped with fresh minced tuna, lots of delicious avocado and a zest of yuzu mayo with a hint of the rocoto chili.  The toasty bread and luscious tuna made the whole dish very pleasurable to consume.  There was no skimping on this small plate; the classic flavors though simple are executed faultlessly.

Causa Snow Crab

These lovely little bites had everyone looking for a little more. Small squares of casua, which is pressed yellow potato, and the snow crab was mixed together with a bit of mayo and topped with a bit of yuzo kosho, which is yuzo zest and chili combined with seasonings, and from that they made a guacamole sauce with huancaina, which is a creamy sauce that normally accompanies potatoes in Peruvian food, and some cucumber for freshness.  The snow crab tasted so fresh and had just the right amount of sauce to bind everything, but not overpower the fragile flavors.

These were pretty much the same thing as the snow crab ones, but chicken. The chicken was almost reminiscent of just plain old chicken salad, so I definitely enjoyed the snow crab much more.

Anticucho is the Peruvian equivalent of skewered meats or other inexpensive ingredients that are marinated and then grilled. The Anticucho Corazon was small pieces of beef heart marinated with very pungent spices and grilled so the heart was so tender and barely recognizable as organ meat.  The sauce atop the beef heart was a rocoto and walnut pesto that had beautiful nutty and cheesy quality to refresh this interesting dish.

These grilled tomatoes were the essence of simple. The pesto was bright and the burrata was creamy and melting along with the hot tomatoes.

These grilled pieces of salmon had an almost candy-like familiarity to them. The miso was more flavored with an almost teriyaki-style glaze and had a deeply sticky chard flavor. Atop the very fresh piece of fish was a clean sweet relish of cucumber, which may have been better if it were hot or sour, instead of more sweetness adding to the already overly sweet salmon.

These little bits of crispy fried chicken came to the table blazing hot, which my brother quickly became aware of, as he put the whole pieces of deceivingly cool looking chicken into his mouth. It was one of those moments when you look over and the person has their mouth open and their hand over their mouth trying to fan and cool the extremely hot piece of meat off as it burns their mouth. Never a good idea, but sometimes you have to learn the hard way. When these chicharrons came to the table, our food runner was very excited to drop off the food and give us a sweet explanation. It definitely sounded more exotic with an accent, but what doesn’t?   The chicken was simple and tasty; a spicy aioli accompanies the dish along with a fresh salad criolla, a version of a South American salad, with lots of onion and citrus over the top.

That was just the appetizer section of this amazing meal. Between which, our server, food runners and everyone else, were very attentive to our table without being overly intrusive. We had plenty of space between our plates so that we could enjoy our food hot and delicious and my sister-in-law and I had plenty of time to take pictures of everything.

Now on to entrees. Out of the 10 available entrée selections, we ordered seven and had doubles of some and triple of one. For small plates, some of these dishes were extremely substantial with hits and misses here and there, but overall a very delicious experience.

Now, I’m not a big fan of banana; in fact, let’s just be honest and say I don’t like them.  Eggs, banana and skirt steak with saucy rice is the essence of this dish. I understand the whole idea and overall I think everything worked pretty well together. Just personally, I would have taken it without the banana and I did, because my brother ate it. The salty sweetness of the banana and sauce was a very interesting and intriguing combination and even if I couldn’t put my finger on it, I know that I didn’t stop eating it, so it couldn’t have been bad.  The steak was flawlessly medium-rare and tender and the egg atop was cooked expertly.

Peruvian fried rice with mixed seafood and pickled radish. This dish was rather salty, but the seafood was cooked well. Nothing really jumped out as amazing in this one. I did like the pickled radish, but it tasted almost more like pickled ginger, which cut out some of that saltiness.

This dish was a Peruvian Bouillabaisse with swordfish. I really enjoyed the swordfish in this dish. It was still succulent and had a nice crusting on the top, the flavor of the soup was not very memorable and there was a hard piece of potato in the soup that was a little bit off-putting.

This dish had a really great idea behind it. A large piece of bread came adorned with crispy pieces of pork ribs that were taken off the bone and piled on top of the bread. The sauces that topped the pork were the creamy huancaina and there was a sweet potato puree as well. My brother and I came to the conclusion that something on the bread tasted a bit like artificial cheese, but for the most part I loved the way the pork was cooked and the sweetness from the sweet potato puree was really appetizing.

I really wanted to like this artichoke, but for a half artichoke with a little fancy butter (Pisco [grape brandy] and Aji Amarillo [Peruvian yellow chili pepper] butter), it could have been better prepared. The leaves were tough and the artichoke wasn’t cooked enough. The flavors that it was cooked with were nice and the dipping sauce (huacatay [black mint] aioli) was pleasant, but the artichoke itself was lacking.

The meat courses were a little on the salty side for our entrees, as we came to see toward the end of our meal. This dish was no exception. The lamb was braised well; it was fall off the bone tender, but as for the cilantro beet sauce and the canario beans it was floating in, they were very salty.

I enjoyed this dish a lot. Sauteed beef filet, roma tomatoes, red onions, ginger and fries. It was simple enough and the beef was delicate and stood out amongst all the onions and tomatoes. I loved the use of ginger in the tomato sauce with the beef. The potatoes were chunky, but they went really well when sopping up some of the delicious sauce.

Lastly, we have the dessert selections. Although only two options were available, it was more than enough after tasting such a variety of dishes during our other courses.

To finish off an already indulgent meal, we had a vanilla bean pisco flan with roasted strawberry, which I thought was tasty but not fantastic.

Wonderfully delicious cookies made from ground almonds and topped with powdered sugar, then filled with raspberry and dulce de leche. I thought these cookies were a real highlight. The crumbly deliciousness of the outside of the cookie with the tart raspberry filling was just very appealing to me.

The entrees were very heavy and rich, which wasn’t a problem, but considering the entire meal, I enjoyed the lightness of the appetizers and their freshness better than the entrée dishes. I’m glad we ordered all these selections because it really made me research the different ingredients and being able to taste them more than once in various dishes throughout the night which is helpful for culinary crafting later on. Chef Ricardo Zarate and his kitchen work very hard in a rather small space to create these amazing dishes, flavors and the experience of dining at Picca. The inspiration of the food is something to marvel at and the flavors definitely take you somewhere far away. I love that ability to be transported to another country by dishes and flavors and I truly felt like that after eating at Picca. The atmosphere and service were lovely and the company could not have been matched with better foodies to enjoy this amazing multi-course meal. Thank you everyone!

Cheers

-Unrivaledkitch