Gastón Acurio, the eatery’s owner, is the Latin Mario Batali. (Alexander Porter/BFAnyc/Sipa Press)
Quinoa salad — a good menu choice — is topped with a duo of ocean scallops. (Jonathan Baskin)
More than once at La Mar Cebicheria Peruana, the hosts couldn’t find our reservation or had the wrong number of people in my party. Waiters wordlessly dropped off strange items or expounded interminably on the obvious — we know what Malbec is, sweets! — while we sat starving.
But La Mar’s whirlwind of exotic flavors blows away what you think of as “Peruvian.” At this brash, $5.5 million interloper on the old Tabla site, staples such as corn, potatoes and beans, often from local farms, hook up with vastly better meat and fish than the cheap-or-else crowd expects at Pio Pio. You’ll easily spend $100 a head; cocktails made with potent pisco brandy ease the sting.
Ignore hype over owner and founding chef Gastón Acurio’s oxymoronic “haute” Peruvian — although it’s a more disciplined cuisine than its vibrant mash-up of Spanish, Asian, African and indigenous influences might suggest.
Acurio, the “Latin Mario Batali,” has 29 restaurants, most in South America. He rolled the dice here big-time — does he know what a challenge this huge space is, on a block with little foot traffic? — but the setting shortchanges the colorful menu. Tabla’s cheery hues were vanquished for a bland palette barely relieved by a “rain chandelier” of wire and glass suspended in the oculus between two levels.
On the airport-like ground floor, waiters wheel out plates like pizza at a mall. There’s nothing ambiguous about the (literally) gray area upstairs: It’s a big, square snore. Sun streams in at lunch, but by night, shades block lamp light from Madison Square Park.
Despite the name, ceviches comprise less than a quarter of the menu. Fine by me: Peru’s “national dish” of seafood “cooked” by citric marination can leave me just as cold. Fruit and acid often overwhelm the fish, no matter how precious the catch.
Acurio and executive chef Victoriano Lopez get three out of four right. Pristine fluke withstood the well-calibrated lime juice onslaught. Rich Australian hamachi (chifa) took on a haunting sweet-and-sour mood amid daikon radish, cucumbers and aji limo.
Lopez’s hand is sure with diverse chillies known as ajis. Appetizers scored, from pastel del choclo, warm Peruvian corn cake richly layered with raisins, onion and mushrooms, to jalea, a medley of deftly deep-fried fish belly, shrimp, octopus and calamari.
Quinoa salad is a $12 steal, even though it was a little smaller each time I had it — the grain woven through with tomatoes, red onion, cucumber, cilantro and parsley, sweetly unified by roasted tomato emulsion, and crowned with a pair of golden caramelized ocean scallops.
“It looks previously eaten,” a friend griped of unfocused, unmemorable arroz con mariscos. But most entrees justify $19 to $39 tabs. Halibut (sudado) was steamed to a delicate consistency in peppery, aromatic broth. Aji amarillo (yellow) sparked creamy chicken stew aji de gallina — a home-style dish refined courtesy of a superior bird and purple potatoes from Union Square Greenmarket.
La Mar has work to do. A $34 lamb entree arrived cold. Fat-kerneled Peruvian corn, which doesn’t travel well, pointlessly pops up all over the place. Guys, we know where you’re from!
Sweet, tongue-tickling desserts overcame the monotony — especially suspiro loco, a crackling-skinned, canoli-like affair filled with dulce de leche cream.
Acurio told Time magazine two years ago, “If we make it in New York, we will be ready to green-light all our brands.”
He might not know the subways yet, but he knows who matters in this town: Mario Batali, who’s practically moved in, is a big fan. Welcome to the ’hood.