Peruvian food
Today was date night, and in our new quest to find exciting, new restaurants, Hiroshi and I went to the Peruvian restaurant in Gotanda. Now neither of us has much of an idea about Peruvian food and the faded menu pictures left much to be desired. But we decided to try it anyway.

Upon enterring the restaurant, I immediately noticed the 'backdoor of a farmhouse' smell - you know that hay underlaced with manure one? Hiroshi didn't notice it, but man, it was just like I was walking by a barn. Not an entirely auspicious start to the meal. But the place had nice decoration, with lots of Peruvian textiles about so we went in and sat down.

The service left much to be desired. Slow and well, the waiter spoke Spanish. Which is great. Three people, three languages and we are stuck with pointing and miming. The things we originally wanted to order weren't available that day. We ended up with the seafood soup, the Peruvian mixed fried seafood and beans and rice with stewed beef.

Now the seafood soup was incredible! Very yummy despite the shrimp and lobster being tough from being overcooked. The beans and rice were also good but the stewed beef on top of it (which was really a stewed steak) was too stew-ey. I think they added in to much 'stewed-taste' spice. LOL I don't know what it was, but the stewed flavour was just too strong. The fried seafood was ok - just firied seafood. Everything was absolutely huge! We shared these three dishes and couldn't finish them.

Anyway, the food was so-so. The soup was great, the beans were good (we'd get a different bean dish next time) and the mango juice was thick and delicious. So I might have gone back until I saw the kitchen... with a roasted chicken sitting in the roaster, without the roaster being on. Can we say salmonella? Glad we didn't have chicken. And the whole kitchen area was generally a disaster. That plus the mosquito that was flying around - what the heck? I've never seen a mosquite in Japan before June. So the general uncleanliness combined with the suss smell on enterring has me wondering when the violent food poisoning spasms will start. JK ... I hope!

So looks like next weekend we will continue our quest for a cool new restaurant.