Lima By the Bay

So here we are in San Francisco. A flight with unexpected turbulence, but the fun of finding out that our pilot, first officer and the air controller responsible for getting the plane to SF were all women. First time I remember that happening. Let's hope it's not the last. And today, the California Supreme Court ruling on same sex marriage. It reminds Annalena of her law school years, when she tried to write an article on the topic, but couldn't find enough material. Ah. Tempus mutantur.

When in SF, we have a "tradition" of going to certain restaurants. Some of them are traditional "days" too. Our first day, we go to dinner at Limon, a Peruvian restaurant in the Mission District.

What exactly is Peruvian food? Well, that's a good question that I cannot answer. It involves a lot of fish, a lot of potatoes, rice, corn, and some interesting flavors like "amarillo peppers," a spic yellow pepper, "masamoro," which is a purple corn that is used as a drink or a dessert, and all kinds of interesting fish, including corvina. Corvina is not a fish I know, and I don't think it's indigenous to Peru. From what I've found, it occurs from Northern California, down to Panama, and that's about its range. But when you transplant a cuisine to a new place, you learn to make changes and I guess that's what happened here.

The corvina featured in what is one of our favorite things on the Limon menu: ceviche. They have a list of seven or so different ceviches. When we order these, and we always do, I think of how my friend Christopher would love this place. Fish, fish, nothing but fish, and spices. No oil, no nothing but seasoning and fish. See, Christopher has two serious flaws: he has a body fat content that is less than about 2%, and he doesn't eat carbohydrates. These flaws are outweighed by the fact that he adores me (which SOME may consider a third flaw), but I consider a virtue well in excess of these teeny flaws. In any event, Christopher would be in protein heaven. So were we. They allow you to order three small portions of any ceviche on the menu, and that's what we did.

BUT... and here's some advice to those of you who are in restaurants, either familiar or not. We turned the choice over to the waiter, asking him to pick his three favorites. You should do that kind of thing once in a while. Giving that level of trust to a waiter or other restaurant staffer will have positive results. They're not going to give you crap. They want you back, and they want the tip. And we were not disappointed. I could have shoveled four or five plates of the corvina ceviche, with those spicy yellow peppers, down my throat. So, too, with the lime one with toasted hominy. The third was ok. It wasn't my favorite.

We moved on to two hot appetizers: seabass seared in miso, and chicharron de pollo . Now, the seabass in miso may m ake you think: "that's PERUVIAN?" Well, yes, it is, bear with me here as I go over one of the uglier bits of US history.

All of us know of the disgrace of the internment camps for Japanese, in WWII. What almost none of us know about , is that the US government shipped THOUSANDS of Japanese to Peru at the same time period. Look it up, it's true.

Some chose not to come back. Who could blame them? And, in a nutshell, that is why one of Peru's presidents was named Fujimori, and why miso is used in Peruvian food.

It was a revelatory piece of fish, cooked just beyond raw, so that you DID have to work to break it into chunks. The chicharrons, served with a spicy vinegar sauce, were perfect too. And what I will tell you is this: when we ordered the items, our waiter, Juan, smiled. So, too, when we decided to finish up with a shared entry of "arroz con mariscas." This may be the apex of fancy Peruvian cooking: rice with an assortment of vegetables and shellfish, and some fish. Sort of like paella, but softer, not as seasoned. It was great.

There was no room for dessert after this, but had there been ,they had cookies stuffed with manjarblanco. Now, here is another bit of advice. Do you know what manjarblanco is? Well, Annalena does, and she has made it ONCE. She will never do it again. It took her five hours to cook down this incredibly sweet, rich, milk dessert. It's wonderful. But if you don't know what it is, ASK. Again, restaurant staff are incredibly interested in helping you, especially in a restaurant that qualifies as "ethnic." Had I had room for dessert, and passed this up instead of something else, I would have been berating myself, once I learned what it was.

Annalena has some final recommendations for dining at "ethnic" type restaurants. If you are a real fan of a particular type of food, say Vietnamese, or Persian, or Chinese, or even Italian, learn some words in the language. Some kitchen words, and some basic ones. Learn to ask the waiter where he's from , in Spanish, or what his favorite dishes are, in Chinese. Annalena's Spanish is far from good, and qualifies as "barely passable," but early on in the meal, she exchanged some words with Juan, in Spanish. That, and asking him to help pick the dishes, made the meal so much more delightful than it would have been (not that it would have been bad).

Anyway, that's the first dispatch. Tonight, we're off to a restaurant that really has pushed the "do it yourself" concept to an extreme. Stay tuned.