Eating from The Sea

Posted by Carolyn

on January 13, 2009

Dining at San Francisco’s La Mar Cebicheria Peruana is perhaps the closest one could hope to dine straight from the sea. This seafood restaurant is located at Pier 1 1/2 on the Embarcadero – an open bright space that overlooks the ocean from which it sources its food. However, those schooled in Spanish may notice a slight grammatical error in the name. The Sea is actually translated as el mar, taking the masculine modifier. This oddity reveals the second characteristic of this restaurant, which is that it’s not named after the sea as one may first assume, but after the street on which the original establishment opened, Av. La Mar, in the Miraflores district of Lima.

I became interested in trying Peruvian fine dining in the States after returning from the country last month and having widely read that Peruvian cuisine is poised to be the “next big thing.” Peru’s star chef Gastón Acurio is certainly leading this culinary movement by bringing his popular restaurant to its first American outpost in October 2008 (La Mar is also open in Mexico DF, Santiago de Chile and rumored to open in New York and Las Vegas eventually). I dropped by the establishment for dinner when I was in San Francisco most recently, and it was certainly an enjoyable and memorable dining experience.

Walking into La Mar, I was taken aback by how spacious it is (and this isn’t just coming from a cramped New Yorker). The multiple room restaurant sits on 11,000 sq feet with a grandiose foyer, lounge, separate pisco bar and main dining room. The overall blue decor with bright pops of yellow, pink, and green create the sensation of dining on a beachfront promenade and the space is centered around an open kitchen. We arrived for our early dinner a little bit before they started serving at 5pm, so I introduced my friend to the pisco sour at the bar. The La Mar version of the Peruvian national cocktail tasted as genuine as the ones I enjoyed in Cusco, albeit a little sweeter, which I think is more suited for the American palette. I opted for a cholopolitan, La Mar’s tasty version of a Cosmopolitan using pisco instead of vodka. It went down very quickly.

For the meal, we sat in the prime location – the middle of the dining room with a square view of both the open kitchen as well as the open sea. There is something very intriguing about seeing your food being being prepared in front of you. I suppose since our society is currently so enamored in cooking shows, having a clear view into the kitchen is a bit like spying on a glamour job in the works. As we nibbled on our starter fried plantains, my friend and I spent a good amount of time trying to figure out who was the executive chef and who was the sous chef.

La Mar isn’t just any seafood joint. As indicated by its name, La Mar specializes in ceviche – a raw fish dish that’s cured in some form of citrus fruit juice. In most restaurants, ceviche is served as an appetizer, but at La Mar, a whole variety can be ordered as the main dish. If you’re coming here for the their speciality, then I recommend sharing the tasting dish, which includes a bit of each type of ceviche they offer. Be warned though, some varieties can be very spicy (which I personally loved). They also serve a vegetarian ceviche to accomodate all sorts of diners.

I mentioned once before that one of my favorite Peruvian dishes is the lomo saltado, so I also had to order it at La Mar. La Mar serves the dish straight up, but also offers an interesting variation – in a spring roll. It maintains the flavor of the traditional dish, but adds a nice fusion spin to it and since we were having the ceviche as the main course, made a nice appetizer.

The menu at La Mar is expansive and creative. I was also eying the regional rice dishes and stews, but was too full to eat any more. Serving sizes are pretty big and I actually thought prices were moderate (but now I may be speaking from the point of view of the often ripped-off New Yorker). A quick glance at Yelp confirms that La Mar has become the hot spot of the moment attracting both locals and tourists alike. More information can be found on their official website.