Cheap Eats - With love from Peru

The Amazon presents beautiful, affordable Peruvian cuisine



It’s been a long two years since I dined to exhaustion in Lima. Between the surfeit of amazing restaurants and my friend Axel’s extraordinary live-in cook, I managed to consume more during a 10-day stay in Peru than I have during an entire ordinary month of my life. No one I raved to about the food in Lima seemed to follow, however. Peruvian restaurants are few and far between in Atlanta. When a Peruvian friend highly recommended the Amazon, Zoila Garcia’s new sister restaurant to Macchu Picchu, we took the longish drive out to Sandy Springs in a sprint.

Cristal clear: Lively late on a weekend night and relaxing on a Sunday evening, the Amazon’s interior has been transformed from standard chain restaurant to a colorful, tiled affair, complete with dangling artificial ivy and the Peruvian equivalent of black velvet paintings. Tables set in rows to the sides of the dining room feel like cozy booths. One sip of sweet, golden Cristal beer ($3.75), one of Peru’s most popular, and I’m transported back to gluttonous days of delicious food. Although causa ($5) isn’t on the menu, Garcia offers to whip some up. The scrumptious, chilled cake of aji-spiked mashed potatoes (aji is a yellow chili pepper that is to Peruvian cuisine what oregano is to Greek) layered with shredded chicken dressed with a heavy hand of mayonnaise and topped with a hardboiled egg wedge is devoured as quickly as it’s set on the table. An order of ceviche mixto ($12.50) is generous enough for two. The impressively fresh grouper, shrimp and scallops is refreshing, tender and bracingly lemony, but the dish is missing toasted choclo (nutty, large-kernel Andean corn).

After my own heart: Although they might be a bit too strongly flavored for some, the anticuchos de corazon ($5.50, beef heart kebabs) are perfectly cooked — with a crusty, tangy char hiding juicy, intense beefiness within. Papa a la huancaina ($4.50) — boiled potatoes in a rich, creamy sauce of cheese, peppers and huacatay (a pungent, almost sour herb distinctive to Peruvian and Bolivian cuisine) — is so tenderly comforting it almost makes me wish for a thunderstorm and a couch to curl up on. Aji de gallina ($8.50), one of the most typical Peruvian dishes, combines shredded chicken with a tumeric-yellow cream sauce kissed with aji peppers and white rice.

Strange fruit: Peruvian cuisine can be pretty belly-filling, but we find room for traditional sweets at the end of our meal. I’m beside myself to find Lucuma ice cream ($3.50) being offered. An ancient Incan fruit, Lucuma could double for butterscotch. Were it not for the slightly pasty nature of the fruit, you’d never guess its flavor didn’t involve caramelized milk and butter. Leche asada ($2.75), a flan sporting a browned top, is a lot eggier than I like custard, but still seduces with its syrupy sweetness.

Adventurous eaters should definitely give the Amazon a try. Owner Zoila Garcia is exceptionally gracious and eager to share her delicious cuisine. I know I’d scale an Incan wall for more of it.

cynthia.wong@creativeloafing.com