Modern Peruvian food pops up, but there’s room for more
For the next three months, local chef Elias Salazar wants the city to catch ceviche fever
Machu Picchu is perhaps the biggest draw for the millions of tourists who flock to Peru each year, but lately its culinary offerings have been getting the attention of chefs and diners from around the world.
The cuisine combines Peru’s ancient ingredients with its multicultural past and uses modern plating to create a new category of dining. And yet in Toronto, a city that embraces global food trends, Peruvian cuisine has yet to go mainstream.
Chef Elias Salazar wants to change that. He has opened a Peruvian popup restaurant inside Rush Lane & Co. cocktail bar at 563 Queen St. W. at Denison Ave. For the next three months starting at 7 p.m. from Tuesday to Saturday, Salazar will cook up elegant plates bursting with colour and flavour.
“I’d say (Peruvian cuisine) is the most diverse cuisine in the world,” says Salazar, who owns a catering business called Limon Modern Peruvian Cuisine.
With the Pacific to the west, the Andes in the north, deserts in the south and the Amazon to the east, Peru has a wealth of biodiversity leading to vastly different culinary regions. In addition to indigenous populations like the Incas cultivating countless varieties of potatoes and corn, Peru’s culinary landscape has been shaped by 500 years of immigration (forced and willing) from West African nations, Japan, Spain and Italy. Immigration from China has brought to life a category of Chinese-Peruvian food called “chifa,” where fried rice and sweet-and-sour sauces reign supreme.
“You can go through the year with a different menu every week and still not go through 25 per cent of the cuisine,” he says.
Salazar, 36, is originally from Callao, the main seaport of Peru. That was where he learned to cook from his grandmother before rising political and economic instability in the mid-’90s brought his family to Toronto in 1997.
He began cooking under the Limon Modern Peruvian name five years ago, hosting pop-ups around the city and doing private events, but laments that Peruvian food never ventured on to mainstream appetites despite the cuisine itself being as diverse as Toronto.
Salazar tells all first-timers to start with his street-style ceviche: octopus and shrimp with paper-thin red onions and crispy fried squid. No ceviche is complete, however, without leches de tigre, or tiger’s milk, the leftover chili-lime marinade at the bottom of the bowl that’s customary to drink after the ceviche is eaten. Salazar blitzes a mixture of lime juice, garlic, scallops, Peruvian rocoto and limo peppers (he’s gets them from Kensington Market) to give the marinade a luscious, creamy texture and a pop of yellow.
There’s also causa, an ancient Peruvian potato salad that Salazar mixes with quinoa for crunch. He adds a Japanese touch of edamame, beets and tempura-fried queso. It’s light, creamy, colourful and pairs perfectly with the chef’s own recipe for chicha morada, a traditional Peruvian purple corn drink with maca root, pineapple, apple juice and five-spice powder.
A handful of Peruvian spots exist in the city — El Fogon in St. Clair West, Bloom Restaurant near High Park and The Boulevard Cafe in the Annex — but none do modern style. Previous attempts by Ardor Bistro and Pisco 1641, were short-lived.
“Toronto loves food trends, but the point of the chef is to keep the food going beyond the trend,” Salazar says. “To cook Peruvian food, you have to do it properly. You need Peruvian peppers and you need to strain them to get the seeds out and then chill it to marry the flavours.”
Salazar has big dreams for Peruvian food in the city.
He brainstorms ideas for his changing menu such as a Peruvian-Chinese fried rice with quinoa, crispy duck and a Peruvian tamarind sauce. He hopes to get his chicha morada into retail stores and has thought about a chain of takeout chifa joints and a place that does Peruvian brunch. For now, he just wants the food-obsessed city to be more familiar with a cuisine. It’s missing out, he says.
“I wish I could have a full day of service so I can push out more food,” Salazar says, acknowledging limits of cooking out of a bar not open during the day. “But the most important thing now is to let people know I’m here.” karonliu@thestar.ca