THENEWYORKER,NOVEMBER4, 2019 11
PHOTOGRAPH BY FRANCES F. DENNY FOR THE NEW YORKER; ILLUSTRATION BY JOOST SWARTE
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TABLESFORTWO
Llama San
359 Sixth Ave.
In the U.S., eating beef heart may seem
off-puttingly adventurous. Unlike, say,
tripe, also known as stomach, the organ
has no alias to hide behind; the diner
must fully grapple with what it is. In Peru,
eating beef heart—sliced into small pieces
and grilled on a skewer, a preparation
known as anticuchos—is as commonplace
as eating a hot dog. Peruvians well know
that the heart, cooked properly, is one of
the most delicious parts of a cow, with a
juicy texture and a clean beefy flavor sim-
ilar to that of a hanger steak. To throw it
away is wasteful not only in terms of sus-
tainability but also in terms of pleasure.
This is one reason to be grateful for
Erik Ramirez, a chef born in New Jersey
to Peruvian parents. He put beef heart,
anticuchos style, on the menu at his first
restaurant, Llama Inn, which opened in
2015, in Williamsburg, and seamlessly
integrated the cuisine of his heritage,
broadly interpreted, into the buzziest
echelon of New York’s restaurant scene.
Earlier this year, he put beef heart on
the menu again, at his third restaurant,
Llama San, in the West Village, which
zeros in on a hyper-specific facet of Pe-
ruvian food by serving dishes inspired
by Nikkei, or Peruvian-Japanese, cuisine.
(His second restaurant, Llamita, also in
the West Village, is a more casual version
of Llama Inn.)
Japanese migrants began to arrive in
Peru at the turn of the twentieth cen-
tury, to work on plantations. The ensuing
history is complicated, to say the least;
the way they were treated was often
despicable. Today, Japanese-Peruvians
make up less than one per cent of Peru’s
population, but, as is the case with many
marginalized immigrant communities
around the world, the influence they’ve
had on their adopted country’s culinary
traditions is outsized. Americans who
have never heard of Nikkei cuisine may
have eaten it nonetheless; a lot of the
food at Nobu—whose founder, Nobu
Matsuhisa, opened his first restaurant
in Lima, in 1973—could be classified as
such. With Llama San, Ramirez joins a
handful of restaurateurs introducing it
more conspicuously to the U.S.
Ceviche, a national dish of Peru, was,
for centuries, customarily made by mar-
inating raw fish for many hours, or even
overnight; in the nineteen-sixties, the
standard shifted after Nikkei chefs began
to serve it much fresher, inspired by sushi
techniques. At Llama San, barely mar-
inated ceviches are a highlight. One
features chunks of lightly cooked sweet
scallop and creamy avocado, sprinkled
with black sesame seeds, in a luscious
leche de tigre (tiger’s milk) marinade fla-
vored with chirimoya, or custard apple,
a fruit native to South America. In an-
other, cubes of tender tuna mingle with
slippery wakame, crisp slices of fried
lotus root, and earthy black-trumpet
mushrooms in a tart, drinkable ponzu.
The beef heart makes up half of a
sort of surf and turf, perched in coins,
with lobes of lobster tail, atop a pedestal
of fragrant, sticky Koshihikari rice, all
hidden beneath a giant, delicate, crinkly
rice cracker. The beef tastes of sweet soy,
and the lobster is glazed in a ruddy sauce
made with aji panca, a mild Peruvian
pepper. It was my second-favorite dish,
after the aged-duck nigiri. The most
obviously bicultural concoction on the
menu, it verges on cutesy but is irresist-
ibly delicious, with slices of rich, meaty
duck laid over mounds of sushi rice
turned herby and emerald-hued with
cilantro. Instead of wasabi, there’s a bit
of caramelized banana; on top of each
piece is an overturned nasturtium leaf,
as picturesque as a lily pad.
The dining room is heady with the
aroma of palo santo, a strongly scented
wood that has become the incense of
choice in the kind of boutique that sells
pricey hand-thrown ceramics and linen
tunics. I assumed, at first, that this was
an attempt at staying au courant, but
Ramirez is more cultural attaché than
trend chaser. Palo santo comes from a
tree that’s native to Peru. It’s burned at
the restaurant so that its smoke can be
captured in a cocktail called Flaming
Creatures, made with Japanese whiskey.
(Dishes $16-$36.)
—Hannah Goldfield
