Andina, Shoreditch
Seeing Martin Morales, purveyor of all things Peruvian, limbering up for the festive season with a spectacular suckling pig on Saturday Kitchen the other day reminded me that so far I have failed to visit any of the newish influx of Peruvian restaurants namely ceviche, Andina and Lima. Morales is head honcho of the first two. Then, lo and behold, a Shoreditch based friend invited me to lunch at Andina last week; yesssssss.
We were restricted to a lunch hour but in that time managed to sample some lovely lovely things from a truly exciting menu. My fave thing is not knowing what something is on a menu and I will always order it to find out. With exotic things like tigers milk, lucuma puree and goldenberry, I was in heaven.
Sadly shunning the fab looking pisco sours, which were perhaps a bit too lethal for a weekday lunch hour, however close to Christmas, we had a large white wine each and got stuck into a tantalingonjly fresh sea bass ceviche. Limey, zesty and very pretty but perhaps a bit heavy on the onion front.
To counterbalance the virtue of the ceviche we felt we simply must order the confit crispy pork belly sandwich and it was s good decision all round. Just the right amount of naughtiness and sticky crispy pork with some kind of heavenly deep orange sauce. We chased these up with a side of some kind of fruit puree that was a bit like squash or sweet potato but almost caramel like. Gigantic corn also went down excellently and reminded me a bit of South African pap if you've ever tried that - it has more of a carby consistency than our corn.
A quinoa and cheese dumpling was nothing like I expected and was more like a Mexican tamale but good nonetheless and the bright green sauce with it was so full of super keen herbs I couldn't even begin to guess its ingredients. In a good way. This Peruvian feast of kings was £22 a head. We'd over ordered for two not huge girls but we'd really wanted to try it all. Dying to go back and eat the rest already.