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IN SEARCH OF THE PERFECT CEBICHE

SOMETHING FISHY | September 20th 2008

Michael Reid reports from Lima on a dish that is catching on around the world...

From INTELLIGENT LIFE magazine, Autumn 2008

A few years ago Peru's leading talk radio station, Radio Programas del Perú, twice organised a competition to find the best cebicheria in the country. They had to drop it after the jury was overwhelmed by more than 500 entries. Now, cebiche is taking off around the world. It appears on menus not just at glamorous spots such as London's Nobu or New York's Le Bernardin but at countless restaurants offering vaguely Latin cooking. Britain's first cebiche bar has opened at the Club Bar & Dining in Soho, and Gaucho, the midmarket chain specialising in Argentinian beef, has gone from
offering one type of cebiche to six.

But it is in Peru that you find the real thing, so my wife and I went back to Lima, her home town, in search of the perfect cebiche. The cold Humboldt current that flows north from Antarctica turns Peru's coast into a desert and brings a sea mist, but it also contains the world's richest fishing grounds. As well as the national dish, cebiche is the icon of a sophisticated cuisine. At its simplest and best, it is a mouth-tingling combination of raw seafood cured in lemon juice and garnished with hot pepper and onion. (Some say it arose because the fishermen, out all day, got hungry and didn't have any other way of cooking.) It is a sensory blast of orgasmic intensity, powerful enough to blow away a hangover but light and refreshing enough to see off afternoon drowsiness.

Though there is much more to Peruvian cooking, cebiche retains pride of place. "It's begun to become a universal dish on which everyone puts their own stamp," says Raúl Vargas, director of Radio Programas and organiser of the oversubscribed competition. I asked him to talk me through it. "Five ingredients are the essence of cebiche," he said. The fish doesn't have to be expensive, just absolutely fresh and firm. Many Peruvian restaurants offer cebiches of several fish and shellfish. To this is added purple onion, finely cut in long thin curves--not more than one part to four parts of fish. Then comes the hot pepper. Peru may not have as many varieties as Mexico, but it has a fine and subtle range. For
cebiche, a stubby scarlet pepper called ají limo is used, spicier than the more common ají amarillo, or yellow pepper, but not as hot as the fiery rocoto. The fourth ingredient is lemon juice, or rather that of the Peruvian limón or key lime--intensely acidic, but with a hint of sweetness. The last ingredient is a generous pinch of salt.

When I ask him to recommend a cebicheria, we are soon in his car. We drive a short distance to Lince, a lower-middle-class neighbourhood halfway between Lima's colonial centre and the prosperous oceanside suburb of Miraflores. Lince's market is typical of Lima: a covered warren of stalls occupying a whole block. In one corner, a dozen fish vendors line up elbow to elbow behind a 25-metre white tiled slab, piled high with corvina (a plump Pacific bass), mero (grouper), giant squid, abundant scallops, juicy mussels and sea snails. In the corner, while her brother sells fish, Señora América Zegarra, a short middle-aged woman with twinkling light-brown eyes, greets Vargas warmly, and sets to work. She takes a bonito, a kind of small tuna, cuts its pale purple flesh into small chunks and dunks them in the lemon juice. In a few minutes the juice has turned milky, and the cebiche is ready, served in an enamel bowl. It is delicious, and at six soles (£1) it is an absolute bargain. While posher restaurants generally use corvina for cebiche, Sra América insists that the oilier bonito is tastier (as well as cheaper), and it is hard to disagree.

Next day I met Mirko Lauer, a friend who is a journalist, poet and foodie. With his daughter Vera, Lauer wrote a book on Peruvian food ("La Revolución Gastronómica Peruana", 2006). They studied how cebiche recipes have evolved over the decades. The marinating time has steadily fallen. Time was when limeñas would prepare cebiche first thing, giving it several hours to marinade. Only 20 years ago, 15-20 minutes was the norm; now a minute or so is common. At La Fiesta, the restaurant in Miraflores where we are talking, the waiter marinates the fish at the table.

"What makes cebiche interesting is not the fish and lemon," Lauer says provocatively. "Anyone can produce that. It's what goes around it that makes Peruvian cebiche unique." This normally includes two pre-Columbian staples, choclo (giant white maize) and camote (sweet potato), to add bulk but also offset the spicy ají And any good cebicheria will greet the customer with a small bowl of cancha, or crunchy toasted and salted maize grains.

Traditionally, Peruvians ate cebiche in mid-morning, as many workers were early-rising migrants from the country. Now, locals eat cebiche for lunch, which at weekends is a long, leisurely affair involving several generations. But they never eat it at night. If you see cebiche on a dinner menu, it's aimed at tourists.

Gastón Acurio, a celebrity chef and one of the leaders of Peru's gastronomic revolution, is boldly exporting the cebicheria around the world. A tousle-headed, friendly dynamo of a man, Acurio is the son of a politician who sent him to the Sorbonne to study law. In secret, he enrolled in the Cordon Bleu, and returned to open Astrid y Gastón, an upmarket restaurant in Miraflores. He has since opened branches in six other countries.

He sees cebicherias as "selling highly sophisticated seafood but in a joyful place, where people relax and enjoy themselves". His cebicheria, La Mar, has reached San Francisco and São Paulo, and he has his eye on London, New York and Las
Vegas, though finding the right sites is tricky. I went to see him at the Lima branch of La Mar, which opened in 2005 as a pilot to test the concept: "a cebicheria that, without losing its essence, could fit in mid-town Manhattan. It's crucial that Peruvians should identify with it, otherwise it wouldn't work."

They have. Acurio deliberately chose a site in Santa Cruz, an edgy barrio in Lima previously notorious for petty crime. La Mar doesn't take reservations and there are queues for a table. The large, triangular room has a bamboo-and-canvas roof, an airy feel, and a long open bar at which staff prepare a dozen cebiches. Salsa plays in the background and a blackboard announces the day's specials, which include various hot fish dishes.

Acurio embraces the new minimalism. As one of his chefs prepares a cebiche de lenguado (Pacific sole), he shares a secret or two. The lemon, he says, should only be squeezed halfway, or the bitter pith will spoil the dish. And he puts a couple of ice cubes in the juice, to keep the cebiche cool and give a gentler taste. He himself is a hugely popular figure. Nobody has done more to get Peruvians to take pride in their cuisine and to make it part of international gastronomy. With La Mar, he is trying to export more than cooking: "Restaurants are theatres of our culture in the world."

If Acurio is the chef as entrepreneur, Javier Wong represents the chef as diva. His name kept coming up in my conversations about cebiche. He prepares some of the best cebiche in Lima, people said, but he operates from a private house rather than a public restaurant. Acurio gave me Wong's phone number and I made an assignation for two days' time. "Not tomorrow", he said, "because I'm cooking lunch for the president in the palace."

With some difficulty, my wife and I find the address Wong has given us, in a side street in Balconcillo, an anonymous district of workshops and mechanics. We ring Wong's bell and are led across a small garden into a large front room with eight tables and wooden chairs. There is no menu. Wong swiftly appears, dressed in a chef's white jacket, a white cap and large dark glasses. He seems entirely conscious of the dramatic effect this creates. Rather than customers, we are made to feel like privileged witnesses of a sacred ritual. Wong stands behind a counter, as if on a stage. He takes a large onion and chops it finely. He goes to a huge chest fridge and selects one of a dozen lenguados piled up within. But these are no ordinary soles: each is two foot long and weighs 12kg. They were brought at 5.30am by a fisherman who is a regular supplier. Wong deftly pares cubes of flesh from the lenguado, and mixes them with the salt, ají limo and the lemon juice. He disdains choclo and camote ("Peruvians are fat enough"). But he adds one other touch: discs of lightly boiled octopus.

Wong says he prefers to operate behind closed doors as he has enough customers. "The lack of a menu allows me to be freer and more creative. The dishes are never the same. My customers are my friends." Other tables are filling up. We eat. It is the perfect cebiche mixto. Peruvians don't know how lucky they are.

(Michael Reid is the Americas editor of The Economist and author of "Forgotten Continent: The Battle for Latin America's Soul")

Image Source: Archivolatino