Elizabeth Keyser photo

Mixed ceviche: tender fish topped with red onions

Fiesta Restaurant
83 Atlantic St., Stamford. (203) 323-4300

 
We can't afford a ticket to Cusco, so we brought our thwarted sense of adventure to Fiesta, a Peruvian restaurant in Stamford. We indulged in new tastes (cancha, chica, aji) and old favorites (ceviche) and got good value for our money.

Fiesta is a casual, colorful place with deep red walls, red paper placemats on the wood tables, muted Latin music on the sound system, tables of Spanish-speaking people and smiling waitresses.

I was craving ceviche, the kind my long-lost Peruvian friend Carlos used to make, with chunks of fish marinated in spicy lime juice and "cooked" by the citric acid of the juice and topped with sliced onions. Fiesta offers fish ceviche, shrimp ceviche and mixed seafood. The best bet is the fish ceviche. For $13, you get a plate that could serve four as an appetizer (or, in my experience, two men with huge appetites and one woman). Beneath a heap of thinly-sliced red onions, the fish is opaque and tender, tasting of well-seasoned lime juice flecked with hot red pepper. The ceviche had the fresh, cool, tangy and spicy flavor I'd been dreaming of. This is the way Carlos made it. A hunk of boiled yucca and sweet potato share the plate, as does cancha, crunchy giant roasted corn kernels.

The waitress brought pint-sized glasses of cold water with a wedge of lime. From the non-alcohol drink list we tried the chica morada ($8), made from purple maize and pineapple rinds. It was cold and sweet, flavored with clove and cinnamon. As for alcoholic beverages, unless you like your sangria made with canned fruit and Chilean white wine almost as sweet as sangria, stick with beer.

The waitress gave us a basket of bread and a bowl of yellow sauce. Skip the bread but use the sauce — aji amarillo, a puree of hot yellow chili pepper — to liven up the starchy, fibrous and bland yucca.

From the entrée menu we ordered lomo saltado ($12), a stir-fry of strips of beef, onions, peppers and tomatoes, served over French fries and with rice on the side. This is a satisfying dish, the potatoes soaking up the soy-flavored sauce. The influence of Peru's Chinese immigrants can also be seen in the offerings of chaufa, the Peruvian version of fried rice, and tallarin, the Peruvian lo mein. The saltados, chaufa and tallarin can be ordered with beef, chicken or fish. Rice is well prepared here, each grain distinct, flavored with salt and olive oil.

Picante de camarones ($14), tender shrimp covered with a mildly spicy tomato, cream and white wine sauce, had us scraping up every last bit of the rich sauce.

Steamed filet of fish with onions, celery and tomatoes is fine, but better after I spooned on the spicy aji sauce. The fish is tilapia, the increasingly unavoidable farmed fish.

The famished will be drawn to the bisteck a lo pobre, steak topped with two fried eggs, served with rice, fried sweet plaintain, French fries and salad. For $15, this is a meal and a half. We ordered the steak rare. It arrived gray, but a steak this thin would take a sleight of hand to keep it pink. The menu describes it as pepper steak. We would have liked more seasoning. Hello aji sauce.

Pollo a la brasa ($7), rotisserie chicken, is moist and flavorful, but the skin didn't crackle. Served with rice and salad, it's a great deal.

Disappointed that there is no chimichurri sauce, the classic Peruvian garlic parsley condiment, we asked the waitress for hot sauce. She brought us a small bowl of a fiery homemade sauce of chopped peppers.

On our two visits, the dishes that contain mixed seafood suffered from overcooking. In the mixed ceviche, the pre-cooked seafood's toughness didn't allow the lime sauce to penetrate the flesh. The octopus was chewy, the squid like rubber bands. We picked our way through the plate to find tender pieces of fresh fish. The raw clam on the half shell that tops the dish was ice cold, fresh and delicious.

On another occasion, the arroz con mariscos, the Peruvian version of Spanish paella, came with a mass of seriously overcooked fish — the rubber-band squid, mussels and clams shriveled in their shells and gummy yellow rice. It was a disaster that never should have left the kitchen. After one bite, we removed it from our table. The waitress removed the charge from the bill.

For dessert, flan was on the menu, but we were too full to try it. Instead we tried the alfajor, a sandwich of thin delicate short bread cookies with a thin layer of dulche a leche. They would be good with a cup of strong coffee.

Fiesta is not fine dining, but if you order carefully, you can have a taste of Peru that's light on the wallet without leaving Fairfield County.