Picca

Picca is a Peruvian cantina. We encourage you to eat your beef heart out. At Picca, Chef Ricardo Zarate serves modern Peruvian cuisine with a Japanese flair. You’ll discover over 50 refined Peruvian dishes designed to be passed around the table. The aforementioned beef heart, arrives on a pair of skewers — we call this “anticucho” — of which there are over a dozen to choose from. Even the simple pollo, covered in rocoto pesto, will push to please. (You can get the beef heart next time.) Trivia: We almost named the restaurant Anticucho. But Picca, which means “to nibble,” stole our hearts at the eleventh hour. Also, please try our causa sushi, our selection of nigiri-like sushi, which instead of arriving on rice, your unagi will come on a perfect rectangle of mashed potato. From our ceviche and tiradito fare to more traditional Peruvian meals like carapulcra, roasted black cod over sun-dried potato stew, or seco de pato, duck leg confit in black beer sauce over cilantro rice, we hope you’ll stop by and try Chef Zarate’s cooking. In fact, we encourage you to sit at at the chef’s counter, and watch him and his entire team cook all night long. In 2011, Chef Zarate was awarded the title of Best New Chef in America by Food & Wine Magazine. Chef Zarate is the culinary director/co-owner of Test Kitchen, LA’s legendary pop-up on steroids,” in which the new iteration will unveil (not) soon enough.