Paiche: Fish and Seafood Galore Washed Down with Some Seriously Refreshing Pisco Sour

I was mixed about the redeveloped area Paiche sits on in Marina Del Rey. It looked nice and it's always good to have free parking in LA but I was also sad about the prospects of gentrification and higher meal prices. Dinela took my dinner companion and I to this newest restaurant from Ricardo Zarate of Mochica and Picca fame. I didn't love the fancier Mochica in Downtown LA (or the original one in Mercado La Paloma, for that matter) and I haven't tried Picca but I liked Paiche. Or was it the fantastic Pisco Sour I started with that won me over?

The stenciled fish powder on top was adorable and the Pisco was darn refreshing. It's the national cocktail for both Peru and Chile, although I first learned about it in Chile. I love that it has egg white in it and can still taste so good. We tried to get two selections of each course. It serves small plates so it's best to go in a large group and try a bunch of things. My favorite was the chicharron de pescado, or fried fish morsels. It was the seasoning in the batter that was unconventional in a good way that gave it a different dimension. They also happened to be super crispy and piping hot.

It being a hot summer, ceviche was a welcome appetizer, drizzled with some soy sauce-based sauce and topped with balls of chrystal-like roe.

We also liked the fish stew that came atop a bowl of rice. I liked that every dish had something different about it -- an unfamiliar flavor here or there that somehow worked infused into the dish. It was a comforting dish. I think one of them was the aji amarillo (Peruvian yellow chili pepper) vinaigrette that was at once subtly spicy and delicious.

I was looking forward to the short rib, especially for it to be super tender, fully expecting it to promptly melt in my mouth. Alas, the seasoning was good and it was definitely an interesting presentation (sliced and layered over pureed starch) but the meat wasn't tender enough. I must say, I wish the chef had cooked it a bit longer so it would have been more tender. It was still good -- on the salty side but what short rib isn't -- and the puree was like a pumpkin puree that was sweet and complemented the saltiness nicely.

The Ensalada Rusa was a gourmet take on the classic tuna mayo salad served as a tapa all over Spain. It means Russian salad but is a Spanish dish that probably made its way to South America. It was an upgraded version though, complete with a hard-boiled quail egg instead of plain ol' egg; fingerling potatoes instead of humble regular potatoes and albacore tuna instead of the canned stuff. I liked that it went light on the mayo, which itself was a fancy version with aji amarillo and yuzu. I liked all the components (+ carrots, haricot vert, peas) except for the tuna that was a tad fishy. So I ate everything but that.

The namesake fish, Paiche, came to our table with this yuzukosho sauce that is a Japanese sauce made of chili peppers, yuzu peel and salt. All this over an unremarkable cabbage salad. The fish was meaty and the sauces went well but it almost ran the risk of being over-sauced with too much going on simultaneously.

The lobster chaufa, or fried rice, was nothing to write home about. I love lobster as much as the next blogger, but it was just bland. Liked the other seafood in it too, like scallop and mussels. But it needed something more to emerge as a memorable dish.

This and our dessert were my least favorite dishes of the evening. The fish was smothered in this sweet sauce that didn't do it for me at all. It was served over a puree that looked and tasted a lot like the one that came with the short rib. The fish flesh was tough and the sauce didn't do anything for me. Bleh.

The chef tried to do something with the desserts but I wasn't into them -- a chocolate pudding tart-like thing and sorbet served with chicha shavings. I'd like to return to try more dishes and most importantly, the churros. Props to the chef for using a decidedly Korean ingredient, gochujang (red pepper paste), for his pork neck dish. Also, gotta try the yuquitos (yuca stuffed beignets. what.).