Noms, Not Bombs: Mo-Chica

Saturday, May 8, 2010

Mo-Chica

For no particularly good reason, my life was Mo-Chica-less until fairly recently. Given both the Peruvian restaurant's proximity to my apartment and my (semi-) regular visits to Thai Corner and Chichen Itza, I have no real excuse for this. With the impending expiration of my BlackboardEats coupon, however, I decided to finally pay Mo-Chica a visit.

Armed with a recommendation from my Twitter buddy LIMER35, I ordered the Chicha Morada (Blue corn tea, $2.00), which might sound strange but tasted wonderfully sweet--somewhere in between tea and juice. J sipped on a Maracuya (Passionfruit juice, $2.00), which reminded me of Hawaiian Sun's liliko'i juice--only stronger and just a little too sweet for my taste.

Just as a hungry J and I were about to eat the tablecloth, we were handed a bowl of crunchy corn kernels. With their buttery glaze and light salt, I couldn't help but popping kernel after kernel into my mouth. Our bowl was quickly empty, and I almost asked for more.

We began our meal with the salad of the day ($5.00), a refreshing quinoa salad with mixed greens, tomatoes and hominy and lemon dressing. This salad was a delight for the tastebuds both in terms of flavors and texture; everything worked together perfectly. I may or may not have been in the processing of scraping the bowl clean when they came to take it away.

For his entree, J ordered the Lomo Saltado ($13.00), one of the best-known Peruvian dishes. Each of the dish's components was delicious in its own right: I would have gladly devoured the savory steak, munched on the fries with some ketchup or added the fresh tomatoes to a salad. Together, however, the three were divine.

Ah, seco de cordero (lamb chunk, cilantro beer stew, Peruvian canary beans, salsa criollo, $13.00), what is there to say about you? You are falling-off-the-bone tender and wonderfully flavorful. It was fun. Let's meet up again soon.

The dessert of the day was a passion fruit creme brulee. I compare all passion fruit creme brulees (hell, all fruit creme brulees) to my favorite one in Hawaii from Side Street Inn, and sadly/happily Mo-Chica blew Side Street Inn out of the water. The tart flavor of the passion fruit was incredibly pure and strong, and I am practically drooling just thinking about it.