La Mar Cebichería Peruana, Lima, 4/20/16

A large open air place that was empty just before noon but by 2:00 pm was packed with diners. The service is very helpful but at times a bit too much so.  There are lots of flavored cocktails to go with the food and the waiters seemed to push them and be less interested in the beer options. The seasonings in most of the dishes was quite pleasant but there was a similarity to the ingredients used in the various dishes. They offer bar seating as an option for small parties. Portions are large enough to split and of course ceviche is a specialty as are the wood fired options.  The meal started strong but had a crash in the middle where it went from ho hum to yuk but redeemed itself with a nice finish.

 

 

Everyone starts off with a dish of fried plantains and potatoes and 3 different sauces to dip them in. We also got a dish of fried large corn kernels that were really crunchy and fun to munch on.

 

Our first dish was chalaco which is the catch of the day ceviche (mahi mahi that day) with octopus, sweet potatoes and corn. It was filled with flavor.

 

Next was the chucuito featuring scallops, which had a basically good taste but had a heavy hand with the mayo mixture and I would have preferred the scallops to be cut into bigger pieces so some of their sweetness and texture could have been detected.

 

For our main dish we had the wood fired lobster and prawns, which was a blackboard special that day and highly recommended by the waiter.  It was a dud. The lobster had the texture of one that had been frozen and the taste of mold. It also had an overwhelming amount of gloppy rice that dwarfed the seafood. The prawns were quite good and I would have preferred just having them.

The waiter insisted we try dessert and selected the chocolate mousse which was very tasty and covered with various seeds on top. They added a wonderful texture to the dish and made a really fun twist on an old standard.