Try this Phoenix chef’s Peruvian-Thai ceviche, trust me
I can’t say I’ve ever fought over a plate of sauce. But there’s a first time for everything. This month I found myself at Vecina sipping a pink peppercorn gin and tonic and stealing the last bit of coconut leche de tigre with the swipe of my finger.
“Sauce” may not be a trending Instagram hashtag like #burgers or #burrata, but this Latin-Asian fusion restaurant knows how to make it both sexy and cravable. Occupying the majority of the plate, sauces are bright and colorful, sometimes swirled in the shape of a music note or dotted in geometric patterns.
And in Vecina’s shockingly good hiramasa ceviche, the elixir is pooled at the bottom of the dish like a seafoam green moat, from which delicate pieces of raw yellowtail emerge.
A marriage by sauce
These sauces are also the mortar that binds together a variety cultures, often in a single dish.
Karaage, the iconic deep fried chicken bites from Japan, are paired with a lush aji amarillo pepper sauce from Peru in a nod to the Nikkei style of PeruvianJapanese cooking popular in the capital city Lima.
When asked about the nam prik in the Oaxacan tlayuda, our server described the Thai chile sauce with roasted tomatoes and peppers as being made almost like you would a Mexican salsa.
The ceviche — one of the best in Arizona — mixes a little bit of Mexican flair with the creamy coconut flavors of Thailand and the bright cilantro and lime of Peruvian cuisine. I’ve never tasted a combination quite like it.
What makes the Vecina ceviche so good?
Screaming green and flecked with Aleppo pepper and dried kernels of flakey Inca-style corn, the ceviche is a showstopper from the moment it hits the table.
Drawing inspiration from Peruvian tiradito, a Japanese influenced sashimi dish that features strips of raw seafood in a chile citrus sauce, the sauce is creamier and thicker than the liquid in a Mexican ceviche. The base is leche de tigre — tiger’s milk — typically made from the runoff ceviche fish juices blended together with lime or sour orange and Peruvian aji peppers among other ingredients.
At Vecina, chef James Fox prepares his leche de tigre with Red Boat fish sauce and coconut milk, blended with fresh cilantro for color and ginger and garlic for a little extra kick.
While the coconut mellowed the flavor and gave it a Southeast Asian vibe, the intense green color reminded me of a special snack I had in the Peruvian highlands of Cajamarca, where an indigenous street seller offered me a spicy aji rocoto sauce as a dip for a hard boiled egg.
To assemble his ceviche, Fox first marinates cubes of amberjack from Chula Seafood in lime juice and red onion for 45 minutes, then tosses the fish with olive oil and grilled pineapple.
He plates the fish over the leche de tigre, which balances the fresh clean flavors with creaminess and tang, and finishes the plate with scatters of Turkish pepper and crunchy corn kernels from Arizona distributors Mount Hope Wholesale.
In Peru the dish would be paired with slices of boiled sweet potatoes to soak up all that tart liquid. And if it were in
Thailand, perhaps you’d find it plopped next to a pile of rice. But Fox does something different. The chef, who’s lived in Los Angeles as well as the Central Mexican pueblo of San Miguel de Allende, pairs his ceviche with tortilla chips. The slender corn chips come from local Phoenix tortilleria Mama Lola’s, which has been in business since 1987.
When asked what inspired him to combine classic Mexican food with the
flavors of South America and Asia, he gave a simple but very satisfying answer.
“It’s the food that I love,” he said. Details: Chula hiramasa ceviche, $22, Vecina, 3433 N. 56th St., Phoenix. 602-675-2000, vecinaphx.com.
Reach reporter Andi Berlin at amberlin@azcentral.com. Follow her on Facebook @andiberlin, Instagram @andiberlin or Twitter @andiberlin.