Chicha (Hong Kong, CHINA) ★★★☆☆

South American cuisine has taken the culinary world by storm in recent years. If you are looking for evidence, simply look at this year's S. Pellegrino & Acqua Panna 50 Best Restaurant in the World. For the first time in history, five South American restaurants made it to the top 100 (3 from Brazil and 2 from Peru).

Unfortunately, there is only a handful of South American restaurants in Hong Kong with none serving authentic Peruivan cuisine. That was until Chicha bursts onto the scene a few months ago.

To me, tonight's dinner at Chicha was as much a history lesson as it was an culinary experience. I was really looking forward to it.



According to our server-turned-history teacher, Peru is an immigration country and a sufficient portion of their 30 million population came from different corners of the world. And because of that, Peruvian cuisine boasts a unique fusion of Spanish, Italian, Chinese, Japanese and Western African influences.

The restaurant was absolutely packed despite it's a Thursday night. The atmosphere was very lively with everyone looking very much entertained.

We started things off with a glass of Chicha Morada, their patented corn juice. I thought corn juice should be yellowish, no ?  Okay, it was made with purple maize and mixed spices.

Well, it was slightly too sour for me but nevertheless very thirst quenching!



With over a million immigrants from Japan, it's not difficult to understand the shadows of Japanese cuisine in some of these Peruvian fusion dishes.

First up for us was an Anticuchos platter. Anticuchos is often used to describe skewed meat (or food) originated from Peru. From the moment it arrived, we could immediately see the Japanese influence straight from the presentation. 

Peruvian Anticuchos are traditionally made with beef hearts and of course we had to try that (leftmost). Hm... I found the texture to be a little bit "sticky" and it didn't seem to mesh well with the aji amarillo (Peruvian yellow chili pepper) and walnut cream on top.



The best of the bunch was the Camote - a round piece of sweet potato topped with huancaina sauce and quail egg. Most skewers tended to be quite oily but this was not. In fact quite refreshing.

Here's another Japanese inspired dish - tiradito which is marinated sashimi style cut fish. We picked the king fish tiradito (other choices were scallops and tuna) since it's less common in other sushi places.

Too bad we found it to be a little bit disappointing. The sashimi just wasn't as rich flavored as we originally hoped. Instead the flavors mainly came from the sauce made with coriander, sweet potato and Peruvian yellow chili pepper.

Things finally turned around with our main course - suckling pig and roasted pork belly with deep fried potato balls served with a rocoto maple sauce. The meat was super tender and the crispy skin was almost as good as those from the Chinese style suckling pig.

 

And lastly, we picked this fried sweet potato donut with orange spiced syrup from the dessert menu. The donut, made with sweet potato flavored flour was soft like sponges. Partnering it with an orange spiced syrup was simply perfect. 

We really enjoyed this history lesson. The food itself offered something different and unique. Although I won't rate it as brilliant, it was something worth trying for sure.

Food Rating: 5/10
Price: $$$
Address: G/F, 26 Peel Street, Hong Kong
Closest Metro Station: Central