Review: New Peruvian restaurant opens on Main Street

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Suyo Modern Peruvian Restaurant & Bar

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Where: 3475 Main St., Vancouver

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When: Dinner, Tuesday to Saturday. Cocktail bar, 5 to 10:30 p.m. on Tuesday to Thursday, to 11 p.m. on Friday and Saturday.

Info and reservations: 604-322-1588, suyo.ca

A cool and seriously Peruvian restaurant just opened and, for me, it lifts the memory fog of unforgettable experiences in Peru.

I speak not of my puny sea-level lungs requiring an oxygen tank in the high Andes or the hair-raisingly creepy, unblinking eyes of a black caiman beside our dug-out canoe in an Amazon lagoon.

I remember the besottingly gorgeous geography, the kind and friendly people, the vibrantly colourful cultural tapestry, and the amazing food, from suppers at farms — where bent and toothless grandmas work-shamed our pathetic volunteer efforts at sheep herding and bean picking — to the celebrated Michelin-starred Central restaurant in Lima whose dishes represent the wildly distinctive regions, altitudes and Indigenous civilizations going back thousands of years.

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Suyo, which recently opened on Main Street in Vancouver, covers that range of Peruvian cuisine with a modern oeuvre. The food, rooted in authentic Peruvian cuisine, is refined but Main Street casual.

When chef/owner Ricardo Valverde was a child in Lima, his mom once pointed to a spot on a map. It was Canada.

“One day, we’re going to live there,” she told him.

He clearly remembers the family’s flight to Vancouver 10 years later, when he was 17. He sat next to his father.

“I said, ‘Papa, what’s the goal here? What do you expect of us?’ ”

“Vamos a hacer patria,” he replied, or let’s make patria. He wanted us to represent our culture and adapt to the new, says Valverde.

Last month, Valverde did that when he opened Suyo, representing Peruvian culture via food, drink and warm hospitality. The restaurant name captures that pivotal moment on the plane — it’s the Peruvian Indigenous word for homeland. His father, now retired, helped renovate the 49-seat restaurant.

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“I wanted his footprint in the place,” Valverde says.

His business partners are general manager James Reynolds, formerly of La Buca, Blue Water Cafe and La Regalade, and director of operations Felix Ng, a tech entrepreneur. Max Curzon-Price from the amazing Botanist bar has joined the team as bar manager.

Valverde was formerly executive chef at Ancora, another fine modern Peruvian/Nikkei restaurant, with locations in Vancouver and West Vancouver.

Suyo’s captured Peruvian soul in the decor, the food and with the extremely deep Peruvian dive Curzon-Price has taken in conjuring his remarkable cocktails.

Wall art in the private room riffs off Peru’s mysterious pre-Columbian Nazca Lines geoglyphs. The main dining area evokes jungle feels with greenery and natural woods, and a golden bar speaks to the importance of gold, the “sweat of the sacred sun,” to Incan culture. And three of five cooks are from Peru.

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“They’re proud of their food and understand it,” Valverde says.

I tried the causa, most often a layered potato dish with minced aji amarillo, a yellow pepper, moulded into a disc or tower. Causa arose out of a good ‘cause’, a fundraising dish during the War of the Pacific in the 1800s, raising money for families of Peruvian soldiers. Valverde reinvents it, piping Nazca-like lines of satiny causa and serving it with crispy fried prawns, quail egg segments and rocoto pepper aioli ($23). Valverde didn’t want a dish dominated by potato.

“You’ll get full too fast,” he reasons. 

Ceviche Mixto ($29) had a variety of shellfish, calamari, seaweed, leche de tigre — made with citrus — aromatics and fish stock. Classic Peruvian ceviche also includes crispy cancha, deep-fried or roasted corn kernels. 

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Russian potato salad, which has invaded Latin America, is given quite a facelift. Suyo’s version, Ensalada Rusa ($21), is, not surprisingly, elevated from the usual potatoes, mayo and chopped vegetables. In fact, Valverde ditches the potatoes in favour of beets, charred avocado, rutabaga poached in kombu and apple juice and young carrots, smoked rutabaga, green beans, harmonized with circles of a smoky aioli — quite an upgrade from potato salad.

Aji de gallina ravioli ($34) is another shape-shifter. It’s based on a popular comfort dish of chicken and potato stew with a cream, walnuts and aji amarillo pepper sauce thickened with bread. Valverde morphs it into ravioli filled with pulled chicken and potatoes, served with a creamy cashew/aji amarillo pepper sauce.

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Lomo saltado, another Peruvian staple, came from the chifas or Chinese restaurants in the country. It’s stir-fried beef with onions, tomatoes, french fries, aji amarillo and soy sauce. I wasn’t a fan in Peru and can’t say I experienced conversion with Valverde’s version, even with lovely triple A Canadian flame-grilled tenderloin and potato wedges. It’s much better than the one I had in Lima but to me, it’s part of the global Chinese cuisine for beginners.

Like the Chinese, Japanese immigrants impacted Peruvian cuisine, especially in restaurants, giving rise to Peruvian Nikkei cuisine. Valverde doesn’t have sushi on this menu as he did at Ancora, but he’s included Nikkei salmon tartare and other dishes with Japanese ingredients. He’ll be adding more Nikkei dishes in time.

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For dessert, I had tres leches de chocolate with whipped caramelized honey which was light and thankfully not too sweet. The other two desserts, at least until Valverde finds a pastry chef, are poached pear with chicha morada glaze and rice pudding panna cotta, and King Kong, a gorilla-sized Peruvian classic with layers of shortbread, dulce de leche, and pineapple spread. Valverde tweaked and downsized it with vanilla sable and whipped chocolate mousse.

The cocktails I mentioned earlier tell Curzon-Price’s stories of Peru. In his Pisco Sour, a Peruvian classic, he substitutes lime juice with a Peruvian citrus that tastes of lemon and lime. And instead of the Angostura bitters commonly dotting the cloud of whipped egg whites, he uses a house-made version of Amargo Chuncho bitters, typically made with over 30 flavours from Peruvian forests.

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Another cocktail exemplifies his use of stories as inspiration. Served in a granite vessel, it’s a tribute to how the Incas “moved mountains” digging for gold for their art and jewelry.

“I wanted a stony flavour profile and a golden taste,” he says.

He mixes clay-aged Pisco Albilla, Genever spirit and Fernet Hunter Granit bitters, which the producer claims capture “the essence and dryness of granite.”

Curzon-Price paints the stone drinking vessel with a mix of edible gold paint, gold flakes, ginger, yuzu and pop rocks.

“You get the crack, sound and sensation of rocks being broken down,” he says.

It’s a trip to just sit at the bar and drink up his stories.

As for Valverde, his patria story isn’t done yet. He hopes to establish a restaurant group around Peruvian food, including one with a charcoal kitchen.

“Who knows, there might be Suyos in other cities. We’ve had people approaching us,” he says.

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