Picca
On Friday, 3/14/2014, it was national “pi” day. Yes, that infamous 3.14 blah blah number that terrorized area and circumferences of objects. This place surprisingly has the letters “pi” in the beginning and is also on Jonathan Gold’s top 101 LA restaurants. It is best described as a peruvian-fusion tapas place.
This is restaurant #10 of 52 on my LA 2014 expedition.
Note for 2022 migration: this is an old post from my other defunct blog. This restaurant is unfortunately closed.
Food
Tuna Tartare. Soy ceviche, avocado relish, wonton chips. This was really really good. It was very refreshing with loads of citrus and lemon. The wonton chips were puffy and crispy with some salt on them.
Oysters A La Chalaca. Pan fried oysters, salsa criolla, rocoto leche de tigre. I looked up what “rocoto leche de tigre” is, and it’s the Peruvian marinade (lime juice, sliced onion, chiles, salt, and pepper — along with a bit of fish juice) for a ceviche. This was also very very good. I wouldn’t hesitate to order this again. Both the tuna tartare and oysters have a lot of sourness to it, a bit more than how some restaurants serve ceviche. I personally like sour, so I enjoyed it.
Anticucho Lengua. Braised ox tongue, bell pepper anticucho. This is the red meat plate for us for the night. The tongue was good. Imagine having a thick cut of pork belly when it was actually the tongue. Of course there’s not as much fat, but it was very soft and buttery. The yellowish sauce on the top had some spice to it, but it went well with the charred tongue. The char on the tongue was actually very smoky and very bold, another favorite quality of mine for red meats.
Ceviche Criollo. Sea bass, rocoto leche de tigre, canchas, sweet potato. This is our last non-dessert plate for the night. I actually did not care much for this. The sea bass didn’t really marinade all the way through, so it was like eating a thick piece of raw fish with a lot of sour sauce.
Tuna Causa. This was interesting. The bottom part of the tuna is some type of potato mash. The top of the potato mash is something similar to spicy tuna on sushi. It’s bite-sized, and it was pretty good. Imagine mash potatoes with some spicy tuna in it. It’s a little pricey, but if you have never had this before, definitely give this a try. I probably wouldn’t order it again as I doubt the different toppings would make it that much different.
Churros. There is some type of filling in the churros, and they also give you a little side of warm chocolate. This was really good. The filling in the churros oozes out when you eat it, and paired with the chocolate it was perfect.
Alfajores Macarons. The last dish of the night are these macarons. I don’t know exactly what flavors were what, but these were just ok. My buddy liked how soft the outside was. I didn’t particularly like it because when you pick it up, it literally fell apart into crumbs like flour that didn’t solidify. It was however very light and fluffy, so if you like super fluffy baked goods, you would probably like this. It’s definitely not like your normal macaron where the shell was candied with an almost cracker-like consistency.
Final Verdict
All in all, this place was pretty good. Because of a lack of appetite, there wasn’t much of an opportunity to order more things, but I definitely wouldn’t hesitate to come back here. We sat at the bar, and watching things come out left and right from the kitchen, you can see there are a lot of interesting menu items that I would like to try some other time. Also, it was relatively easy to find street parking, assuming you can withstand walking 5 minutes.
Revisions
- Nov 13, 2022 - Migrated post from other blog.
- Mar 15, 2014 - Initial version.