Peruvian restaurants in Toronto are slim pickings. I figured there’d be more options than Montreal, but there just aren’t, that I know of. If I’m wrong, tell me. But I headed to the most written-about and liked place, anyway – El Fogon. Located up on St. Clair, this few-frills restaurants serves up heaping platters of rice, potatoes, cheap, tasty meats, and unsustainable, buttery fish to eaters either on a budget or seeking heat. The aji Amarillo chili paste made in house from supposedly fresh, not dried Amarillo Peruvian chilies adds a fair bit of kick, though I had to use the entire container of the watered-down stuff to satisfy my heat-tooth. Yes, that’s a thing. Not a sweet-tooth. A heat-tooth.
Ceviche. You have to start with ceviche here, says everyone else. But everyone else is wrong.
Skip the tough, raw whitefish marinating in the wrong kind of juice. Apparently the limes weren’t juicy enough, so they used lemon. Bad idea. It wrecks the dish. It’s supposed to be a balance of hot, sour, and salty, the sour is all wrong and impossible to balance. The leche de tigre – the supposedly aphrodisiac fish-marinating juice left over at the bottom of the platter after you eat the chopped (hacked) fish and its side of white corn (yellow, Canadian corn used here – way too sweet) and sweet potato (would have been fine but everything else was too sweet and lemon can’t cut through the sweet potato like lime) – was just lemon and salt. No lime or chili kick at all. Not enough chili in there even for North American standards. How are you supposed to last all night on that? Some aphrodisiac that leche de tigre would be. I’d be out like a light before a single candle was lit and before Barry Manilow had managed a single, husky tone…
But everything got better after that. Pictured above: ¾ of a plate of white rice (just like in Peru) topped with a perfectly tender, melting, buttery bass fillet of the same size marinated and grilled to flaky perfection with a few un-namable spices – though mostly salt. Hidden underneath were the sweetest, caramelized (instead of dry, Caribbean-style) plantains I’ve ever had, making each mixed mouthful of rice-fish-plantain a bit of heaven. It’s a big enough portion for two, but you won’t want to take it to go because you know reheating it the next day it won’t possibly be as tender and delicious. Just skip dessert instead. Or go for another pisco sour or Inka Cola (sold in a can. I never once saw it sold in a can in a restaurant in Peru, but it’s better for the environment than plastic, I guess, so I’m okay with seeing that can on the restaurant table. Fine dining, this ain’t, though the service is super pro and the table cloth is not paper).
About the server – he’s been serving in Canada for awhile (maybe he’s Canadian? Something tells me no, but who am I to say?), and the restaurant’s been around for awhile, serving Canadians of all origins, so even though the staff is probably mostly Peruvian the restaurant’s pretty user-friendly for all, even stuck up foodies like me who pretend to know what they’re talking about sometimes). Oh, and the bass fillet – it was supposed to be floured and grilled, but I can’t do gluten lately, so they just grilled it straight for me. For “winging it” they did an amazing job. It should be on the menu that way. Skip the flour and extra oil.
My friend had the other house specialty – the lomo saltado. Marinated beef stir-fry in soy sauce with perfunctory onion strips, potato chunks (cut french fry-style) and tons of rice. Chinese-Peruvian cooking just like down south. I didn’t try it, but it looked textbook, cheap lunch-ish from Lima. I would have had the Parihuela hot-and-sour fish soup or the mussels or the other fish dishes but they all were made with the fish and shrimp broth, and the shrimp come from India and I don’t eat those for ethical reasons. I also think shrimp broth made from those farmed, water and earth-destroying bottom-feeders just tastes too fishy and disgusting. So I ate most of a bass instead. Well, no, bass are huge, but I ate the best part.
There’s chicken on the menu here too, but they’re better known for their beef. The meat and poultry all comes from the Portuguese butcher down the road. Don’t expect organic, but the cuts are supposed to be cheap in this kind of cuisine. No waste. Peru isn’t exactly a rich country, and fillet mignon is only now becoming an option, and not on Peruvian salaries.
So for an inexpensive meal of traditional (mostly) dishes, a real taste of what a lot of people eat like in Peru every day (at least the city dwellers looking for inexpensive, filling lunches – the major meal of the day), El Fogon does its country proud.
Where: 543 St. Clair West
When: Wed-Sun noon – 10pm
How much: Under $20 all-in.
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