Daily Breeze News-Pilot  May 12, 1995
PRIMORDIAL PANACHE
 
EL ROCOTO SERVES BEST OF OLD PERU
BY MERRILL SHINDLER SPECIAL TO RAVE!

When Francisco Pizarro and his conquistadores landed on the shores of Peru in the 16th century, they expected to find a land where emeralds lay on the ground and the temples were paneled in gold. What they found instead was a gentle country populated by Incas whose diet was mostly (though not completely) vegetarian. Though the Incas ate deer, llamas, guinea pigs, fish and ducks, those were luxury items; at the heart of their diet were squash, beans, peanuts, tomatoes, avocado, chile peppers and, above everything else, potatoes.
   
The potato is native to Peru, though it’s hard to believe it hasn’t always been part and parcel of the cooking of Ireland, Germany, France and North America. Just think: almost a whole world without french fries! It’s one of the few edibles that grow above 10,000 feet; and since much of Peru is way up there, it’s long been an essential chunk of the Peruvian diet.

And it’s further a cuisine filled with culinary carom shots. Peru has one of the largest Japanese populations outside of Japan — the president of Peru is Alberto Fujimori, and Nobu Matsuhisa, of the superb Matsuhisa Restaurant in Beverly Hills, spent many years there honing his craft. It has a sizable Chinese population as well; Chinese restaurants are almost as ubiquitous in Lima as they are in New York. Which is why it comes as only a small surprise to come upon El Rocoto, a wonderful Peruvian restaurant next to a - 99 Ranch Market in Gardena, with an Asian staff, and a large section on the menu of Chinese-Peruvian dishes.
   
El Rocoto is diagonally across from the Gardena branch of El Pollo lnka, which is an edible tribute to the Peruvian way with chicken, a way well worth following.
Where El Polio lnka is rather kitschy in its appearance, with large black light murals of urban and rural scenes on the walls and Peruvian music played on panpipes of various sizes El Rocoto is almost delicate in its decor. It’s a pleasant restaurant with a sort of indoor gazebo look, an almost feminine place where the portions are awesome and the prices so low I kept thinking they had made a mistake on the bill. There’s nothing on the menu for more than $7.95.
    
A proper sampling of the joys of Peruvian cooking at El Rocoto should begin with a
bunch of appetizers, certainly with a big plate of papa a Ia huancaina, a sort of primordial potato salad, in which a cold boiled potato is topped with an almost luminescent cheese sauce, sliced olives and hard- cooked eggs.

For the average appetite, it’s a meal in itself, especially if you put away a plate of the wonderful sweet bread and biting green salsa that comes with every meal served in a Peruvian restaurant. Another memorable potato dish found at El Rocoto is ocopa, which is much like huancaina, except the sauce is made of walnuts and shrimp, a taste that lets you know you’re certainly not in Kansas anymore.
    
They also make an awesome tamale in Peru, an oversized relative of the Mexican tamale, properly called a tamal peruano con salsa criolla, filled to bursting with pork, with sliced olives and eggs, and pickled onions on the side.
   
One of the great creations of South American cooking is ceviche, a dish in which a variety of seafood is “cooked” by the acid in lime juice. The ceviche mixto served at El Rocoto is as good at the stuff made at fabled So Cal ceviche bars like El Silencio and Antartica, a sumptuous plate of marinated fish, shrimp, octopus, shrimp and mussels, flavored with onions and cilantro, with corn and sweet potato on the side. There’s a knockout of a steamed mussel dish called choros a la criolla, that’s basically a plate of mussels buried beneath a mass of pickled onions — not subtle, but awfully good.

There are a bunch of seafood soups here, more stews than soups really, and each as
filling as you could want — especially wondrous are the wildly spicy shrimp chowder called chupe de camarones, and the Peruvian equivalent of Manhattan-style chowder, a red soup called parihuela salvaje, made with fish, shrimp, squid, mussels and octopus.Seated at El Rocoto, you’ll notice a lot of large plates steaming by on their way to some hungry people.
   
Platters of saltado de mariscos, a stir-fry of shrimp, squid and octopus, onions and tomatoes, with french fries tossed in for good measure.

It may sound strange to toss french fries with seafood and vegetables, but it works exceedingly well; one bite and you’re absolutely hooked. (There’s also saltado de camarones, saltado de polo, and lomo saltado, all of which follow the same basic
style — french fries tossed with protein and veggies.) Picante de mariscos is basically the same thing, but several karmic levels spicier. Tallarin saltado de mariscos tosses in some spaghetti, for the fun of it.

Jalea is a feast of many deep-fried things — shrimp, squid, scallops, mussels and octopus. The menu mentions it’s good for two. Take the menu seriously.

And then there are those Asian-Peruvian dishes. Like the chicharron de pollo con nabo encurtido, basically pieces of boneless chicken, deep-fried until they turn into something akin to chicken chips. They crunch, loudly, when you bite into them. The nabo is pickled daikon, a decidedly Japanese touch.

Pizarro went to Peru looking for Gold; it was the food have brought back home.