Peruvian splendor
Empanadas, pisco and small plates shine at Triciclo Peru.
At Triciclo Peru on a Saturday night, the syncopated rhythms of música criolla and the buzz of diners swirled through the dining room. Customers were laughing and chatting at tables painted to resemble colorful Peruvian textiles. It looked and felt like the place to be.
I’d been at Triciclo Peru before when there was a wait on the weekend for a table. Customers take a seat at the bar or at a counter along windows until it’s their turn; some dig in right where they are (the restaurant seats 40, including the bar and counter).
Amy Narr and Mario Diaz Herrera opened their restaurant in December, the next step from the food cart they started in 2017. From the cart stationed around town, they sold only empanadas, just like the merchants that ply the streets of Peru on large tricycles with baskets.
Triciclo Peru bills itself as an empanada and pisco bar, and it has plenty of both — 10 kinds of the savory filled pastries plus the clear Peruvian brandy used in all sorts of cocktails here.
The restaurant, though, is more than that.
Those snacks and small plates! Start there. They’d be marvelous with an after-work drink, or as an appetizer before dinner, or even dinner itself, if you try a few.
Can there be a meat-and-potatoes lover who could resist the papas rellenas ($7 for two)? Golden, lightly crisped fritters of mashed potato shells were filled with ground beef and hard-cooked egg. They’re delicious on their own and even better with zarza criolla, the salsa of thin-sliced red onion, lime juice and cilantro.
Two skewers of anticuchos ($8) — lushly seasoned grilled beef heart — is another classic Peruvian plate, but it gets a modern presentation here, with oversized Peruvian corn, potato and spicy, creamy rocoto sauce.
There are eye-catching seafood plates: tuna tiradito ($12), a cevichemeets-sashimi dish of raw tuna arranged like a flower, garnished with red sorrel and resting in a bright, savory pool of lime juice and aji amarillo, one of Peru’s favorite chiles; and crab causa ($12), chilled layers of vividly fresh crabmeat, avocado and potato, crowned lavishly with more crabmeat over creamy aji amarillo sauce.
Any of those plates is one that a couple of diners could share as a snack or first course. The same goes for the tasty cooked salad, composed of carrots, green beans, beet and Peruvian corn in an emulsified vinaigrette ($8).
Triciclo Peru has four main dishes, and I could have shared one of those with a friend, too. Portions are generous, and the plates are quite rich. They’re all pastas or risotto, a contribution to the cuisine from Peru’s Italian immigrants.
Take, for instance, the ribeye milanesa ($22), breaded steak pan-fried until delightfully crackly and served over a mound of ridged pasta in ultracreamy, Peruvian-style pesto that’s vibrant with fresh basil. Delicious, but just a few bites of that rich pasta satisfied me. (The saucy pasta is served in a bowl to contain it, and the steak was placed over the pasta, a squishily awkward surface for cutting.)
Likewise, fettuccine is slathered in huancaina, Peru’s slightly spicy cheese sauce, and served with a variation on lomo saltado ($16), hanger steak stir fried with soy sauce, tomato and red onion to give the beef even more depth. So savory, and rich.
A meal could be made simply of empanadas ($5 apiece). The crusts on those baked parcels weren’t quite as I remembered from food cart days — more sandy textured than flaky — though memory can be a tricky thing. Still, they held tasty fillings, from the traditional (minced beef, raisin, black olive, hard-cooked egg in one called the Lima) to the not-so-traditional (the Wisconsin: breakfast sausage, egg, red pepper and cheddar — great for brunch).
There are gluten-free and vegan ones, too — empanadas for all! — and the restaurant sells some varieties in frozen packs of three to take home. One makes a hearty snack, two or maybe three a meal, more if you’re really, really hungry (or sharing).
Triciclo Peru is open for lunch, a smart move since the Harley-Davidson headquarters is practically in its backyard, Molson Coors is just across from
Harley, and Milwaukee Public Schools’ central office a mere mile down the street.
It serves those empanadas, salads and other plates along with several sandwiches, including hefty pan con chicharrón, crisped pork belly with fried sweet potato ($8).
The restaurant is open for Sunday brunch, when it adds a few plates such as a tamal filled with chicken or pork that’s steamed in banana leaves ($6).
For something sweet, Triciclo Peru’s alfajor ($2) in particular is a gem, a sandwich cookie of fresh shortbreadlike rounds filled generously with caramel-like dulce de leche. Rice pudding here gets a delicate tuile made of purple corn ($7), and the picarones, four pumpkin-sweet potato doughnuts ($6), rest in spiced syrup made from unrefined sugar.
The place is said to fill up at happy hour. The bar has Peruvian and local beers, and a broad array of cocktails made with pisco or house-infused pisco (besides nonalcoholic options like its Machu Punch, a mix of juices and herbs for $4 and Peruvian coffee roasted by Anodyne or the restaurant’s blend at $3).
Sipping a Chilcano ($9), a pisco highball with ginger ale, lime juice, grenadine and bitters that’s like summer in a glass, made me think having it again when the weather warms.
By then, the garage window of this restored building will be rolled up, and neighbor Pete’s Pops will reopen to sell its frozen treats. Both businesses won the Near West Side Partners entrepreneur competition to launch their brickand-mortar businesses, and it’s warming already to see their effect, with other businesses like the longtime Sanders Super Bowl, on this refreshed stretch of Vliet Street.
Carol Deptolla has been reviewing restaurants in Milwaukee and Wisconsin since 2008. She visits restaurants — unannounced — several times to better evaluate food and service and usually brings other diners to sample the menu widely. Like all Journal Sentinel reporters, she buys all meals, accepts no gifts and is independent of all establishments she covers, working only for our readers.
Contact her at carol.deptolla@jrn.com or (414) 224-2841, or through the Journal Sentinel Food & Home page on Facebook. Follow her on Twitter at @mkediner or Instagram at @mke_ diner.