Kay Pacha can’t deliver in the end
Peruvian restaurant Kay Pacha is located at 744 St. Clair Ave. W. in Toronto.
Dinner at Kay Pacha starts out well,
then quickly goes downhill. The pricey new restaurant in Hillcrest Village aims to elevate the cuisine of Peru through Instagram-worthy visuals.
Meals begin with innovative cocktails based on the Peruvian brandy pisco. Its potency punches up the house version of chicha morada ($17), a purple corn drink boiled with cinnamon and cloves; bartender Will Publow carefully paints yellow lemon sugar onto the frothy surface. The Chilcano ($16), normally made with pisco and ginger ale, gets an artisanal update with lemongrass syrup.
Appetizers further impress with their upscale take on Peruvian street foods. Delicate baby tamales ($10) combine the deliciousness of pork belly and cornmeal in an earthy packet. The elegance of julienned red onions tops crunchy fried calamari ($13) kicked up with lime juice and hot peppers.
Then comes disappointment; this is consistent over multiple visits. Whatever the reason — a backed-up kitchen, an overly ambitious menu, mishandled ingredients — Kay Pacha drops the ball with its main courses and desserts.
Kay Pacha opened Nov. 24 in the former seafood restaurant Catch.
Peruvian native Elias Salazar, the chef and co-owner, kept the large plate-glass windows and coffered wooden ceiling. Nothing about the bistro decor telegraphs the restaurant’s theme.
But the menu is clearly Peruvian, that inimitable blend of Andean, European and Asian foods. We have 10 or so Peruvian restaurants in Toronto; Kay Pacha aims higher than all of them.
Written in Spanish and English, the menu expects diners to know their aji rocoto (a hot pepper) from their salsa criolla (Creole sauce). You definitely should know and love huancaina sauce because it shows up in four of the 18 dishes. (If you don’t, picture thinnedout pimiento cheese with a nice kick.)
This is Salazar’s first restaurant in his 23-year cooking career. The caterer, age 38, ran Kay Pacha (a spiritual Quechua phrase he translates as “to be connected with the world”) as a pop-up in 2016.
“I learned how people responded to the food,” says Salazar, who is planning a second Peruvian restaurant focused on lower-end street food.
Kay Pacha excels at its smaller dishes, such as causa Limena ($17). Lima’s beloved chicken salad is here done as a pyramid of layers: organic shredded chicken bound with yuzu mayo, heirloom tomato, quail’s egg, avocado and botija olives native to Peru. Covering the pyramid are three kinds of sauce: yellow huancaina, orange rocoto and purple botija emulsion. It’s ready for its Instagram close-up.
But disaster strikes when the kitchen pivots away from appetizers. Scallops ($34) are overcooked, desserts are clumsy and the strip loin steak ($34) is hampered by inedible silverskin membrane.
For tallarin saltado ($28), the Peruvian-Chinese chow mein, Kay Pacha uses fresh spaghetti instead of the usual dried product. Such upgrades don’t matter when the stir-fry contains measly amounts of protein (two slices of chewy steak and three shrimp) plus a palatekilling surplus of soy sauce and ginger.
It’s a big comedown from the promising start. Another night, the disappointment comes from an hour-long wait for our main courses. Inside the open kitchen, Salazar takes pictures of a dish sitting on the pass. (Not ours.) There is neither explanation nor apology for the wait.
“It’s happened once or twice. We’ve been trying to get the proper service,” Salazar later says in a phone interview.
No dish shows up on social media as frequently as Kay Pacha’s signature ceviche de carretilla ($23), raw chunks of black grouper done in the style of a Peruvian pushcart. It boasts two kinds of corn — soft choclo kernels contrasting against crunchy toasted cancha — and sweet potatoes in a balanced sauce of garlic, hot peppers and citrus. Its good reputation is deserved.
If only dinner stopped there.
Amy Pataki’s restaurant reviews are published Fridays online and Wednesdays in print. Read more at thestar.com. Reach her at apataki@thestar.ca or on Twitter @amypataki.