Peru

Paracas Peruvian Restaurant

We recently tried Paracas Peruvian restaurant located at 992 St. Clair Avenue West.  It is a moderate sized, homey restaurant, with decorations reflecting the Peruvian culture and art forms.  Peruvian food, like many other country’s cuisine’s, is a mixture from its indigenous population, in this case the Inca, colonizers and immigrants and the types of food products traditionally locally available.  The four staples of Peruvian cuisine are corn, potatoes, edible seeds such as quinoa and legumes.  In fact, Peru is the largest producer of quinoa in the world and boasts about cultivating close to 4000 types of potatoes – so they are really into their spuds.  Despite the abundance of potatoes in Peru, this hasn’t translated an abundance of innovative potato dishes.  Potatoes in Peruvian cuisine are mostly served either friend or boiled.  This was the case at Paracas.  We ordered lomo saltado and a whole, grilled red snapper.  Lomo saltado is a traditional Peruvian dish of stir friend beef with onion, tomatoes, and sometimes other vegetables such a green or red peppers, served over French fries and rice.  The red snapper was served whole along with boiled potatoes, rice and a salad.  Both dishes were presented beautifully.  Not that we’re not ones to usually complain about salt, but we found that the lomo saltado had to much salt and the red snapper didn’t have enough.  We would have like to try to ceviche, a typical Peruvian dish made from raw fish cured with citrus juice, but we were scared off by the price.  I guess that is to be expected to land-locked Toronto, and you wouldn’t want to eat anything but the freshest fish when consuming something that is practically raw.  But, sushi restaurant seem to be able to do it – just saying.  When we visited Peru a couple of years ago we told not to eat ceviche after 4pm as it wouldn’t be fresh – and it was probably caught that day!  All of that being said,  we largely enjoyed our meals at Pracas.  I guess we just a bit spoiled, maybe even a bit jaded, having eaten so much delicious Peruvian in Peru.