From the Andes down to Anaheim
The snow-capped volcano El Misti dominates Arequipa. That Andean city, located on the ancient route linking Bolivia’s silver mines to the Peruvian coast, attracted numbers of Spanish settlers in colonial times, and they built dazzling white buildings from El Misti’s lava. Even today Arequipa is nicknamed La Ciudad Blanca.
It has its own cuisine, distinct from the Lima-style Peruvian food we’re familiar with around here. It’s based on the indigenous ingredients of Arequipa’s high-desert setting: hot rocoto chiles, the mint-like herb huacatay, freeze-dried potatoes (chunos), dried llama meat (charqui) and guinea pigs for roasting. Even now cocina Arequipena has a special place in the hearts of Peru’s food cognoscenti.
El Misti calls itself a picanteria Arequipena. Traditionally, picanterias were family-owned eateries where farm workers would gather for home-style meals washed down with the local beverage chicha. The tradition is illustrated on El Misti’s walls with a series of bold, colorful paintings.
El Misti may be an Anaheim update of the picanteria theme, but El Misti’s owners, Juan and Hilda Copara, go to the trouble of making their chichas from scratch. Many Peruvian places use instant chicha mixes. Chicha de jora requires several steps, including sprouting corn kernels and barley and fermenting them overnight, which yields a slightly viscous drink that tastes something like sparkling cider. They also make a chicha from purple corn sweetened with pineapple juice; it tastes fresh and not overly sweet.
At dinner, every table in the house gets an amuse-gueule: a small plate of stewed broad beans the size of walnut halves and boiled giant corn kernels that look like mini inflated party balloons.
Ceviche probably wasn’t part of Arequipa’s original repertoire but it’s almost mandatory in Peruvian restaurants, and El Misti makes an outstanding version. The beautifully fresh halibut strips, tinged with the subtlest zing of chile, hold up well to the sparkling citrus marinade. Ostensibly this is an appetizer, but the platter serves at least four.
Choros a la criolla, a sort of chilled mussel tartar, should absolutely not be missed. The lightly cooked shellfish, minced and tossed with an exquisitely balanced parsley-citrus sauce, is served on mussel shells.
As a change of pace from papas a la Huancaina, the ubiquitous Peruvian appetizer of potatoes in cheese sauce, try yuca frita. The long chunks of crisply fried root come with a little bowl of the same sort of velvety, cheese-rich sauce for dipping infused with the barest glow of chile heat. Another appetizer (very typical of Arequipa, says Juan Copara), is ocopa: boiled potato covered with a creamy sauce of crushed walnuts and shrimp sauce. But it comes automatically with several entrees, so you might not want it as an appetizer.
An excellent introduction to the cuisine is the combinado Arequipeno. A tennis ball-sized rocoto chile stuffed with picadillo (chopped beef laced with garlic, onion and raisins) rests on a bed of fluffy scrambled eggs -- a pairing as sublime as warm cookies with cold milk (or caviar and vodka, depending on your taste). Beside it sit several juicy roasted lamb ribs, a neat square of rich potato gratin made with fresh Peruvian cheese and some ocopa. The Americano plate is nearly the same, substituting pickled pig knuckles for the lamb.
Less interesting (but still good) is pescado a lo Misti, a fried fish filet accompanied by two whole deep-fried potatoes, their crisp veneer topped with ocopa sauce. Pescado sudado, steamed rockfish filet in a mild, rather Mediterranean tomato and onion sauce, seems a tad prosaic next to such exotica as olluquito con charqui. This soul-satisfying stew combines potato-like tubers the size of your little finger with supple dried beef (sorry, not llama charqui). Hilda Copara, who’s the cook, also makes a fine chupe de camarones -- with shell-on shrimp in a creamy chowder that holds a whole poached egg and tiny chunks of imported Peruvian fresh cheese.
As Peru’s second city after Lima, Arequipa has inherited urban dishes such as chifas, the stir-fries (chow fun) introduced by Chinese restaurateurs. But instead of them, I’d vote for the less common aji de gallina, a mound of shredded chicken in a velvety ground nut sauce spiked with low-voltage yellow chile.
And for dessert? The flan is OK, but definitely get the picarones, doughnut-shaped fritters drizzled with a light cinnamon syrup. Instead of the traditional pumpkin, Hilda Copara’s version incorporates butternut squash into the batter -- something only an updated picanteria would try.
*
El Misti
Location: 3070 W. Lincoln Ave., Anaheim, (714) 995-5944.
Price: Appetizers, $3.50 to $10.50; entrees, $6.95 to $15.95; desserts, $2 to $3.
Best dishes: ceviche, choros a la criolla, combinado Arequipeno, olluquito con charqui, chupe de camaron, aji de gallina, picarones, chicha.
Details: 11 a.m. to 8 p.m. Tuesday to Friday; 9 a.m. to 11 p.m. Saturday; 9 a.m. to 8 p.m. Sunday. Wine and beer. Parking lot. Visa and MasterCard.