Chez Wong

There is a very famous, small cevicheria in Lima called Chez Wong. It has been written up by the Wall Street Journal, numerous other food magazines, Anthony Bourdain, and just about everyone here has heard of it.

Which is interesting, considering it is only open for lunch (which we discovered is a cevicheria tradition - probably based on the availability of fresh fish) and only has ten tables. There is no "good" wine available, but you can buy those little bottles like you get on an airplane. Or you can get beer, or just water. We just opted for sparkling water.

We had a reservation time of 1:00 PM, and we showed up about 1:15. All but one of the other tables was filled, so we sat down at our little plastic deuce:

Note the photo in the background. Chef Wong with Eric Rippert and Anthony Bourdain.

He also has numerous Peruvian navy photos on the other wall:

The chef came in shortly after we did (smoking a cigarette that he discarded when he entered the restaurant) and got to slicing up some big ground fish (Flounder? Halibut? I can't really tell the difference)

It was impressive to watch him chop the red onions, filet the fish, and pour a quart or so of lime juice into a big stainless steel bowl.

The bowl already had octopus in it, and he barely let the mixture set before he started dishing it out.

This was the first dish. A classic mixes ceviche.

The little peppers are aji peppers. Pretty darned hot - a little goes a long way - but you want just a tiny bite with the rest of the dish. Delicious! Best ceviche we've ever had (and remember, we ate at La Mar yesterday)

Next, he did another ceviche with another big fish. He was also chopping a bunch of other vegetables. Now, I am no cevichero, so I have no idea what he was doing, but it was fun to watch.

I had mentioned the place was small, but everyone had a great view of the Chef, and he knew he was putting on a show. I am pretty sure that if he wasn't doing all this work in front of the tables that he would not be getting such rave reviews:

Here is the next dish - I have no idea what that green vegetable is, nor what the crunchy brown stuff on top of the fish is. I do know there was sesame oil and garlic, and I don't think there was any lime juice in this one at all.

You can see how simple the tables are:

Next was a stir fry. We had heard that the meal was two ceviches and a stir fry (though when they were explaining the meal to us, I swear the waiter said "ensalada" which means, of course, "Salad")

Here is the chef chopping up more fish for the stir fry: 

And the stir fry itself. Very dramatic: 

Mushrooms, green onion, fish, other green things:

You can also see our drinks here: 

After we finished, the waiter asked our next door table neighbor (with whom we had been chatting in a mixture of my bad Spanish and his English) if we wanted another stir fry. I am not sure if we still looked hungry or not, but of course we said Yes!

This one had a full bottle of cheap white  wine in the sauce.

It was good, but not as good as the other stir fry.

But we ate every bit.

We could barely wait to dig in:

At the end of the meal, I asked if we could have our photo taken with Chef Javier Wong.

He is a showman at heart, and as the photo was about to be snapped, he grabbed this big fish:

Then everyone in the restaurant lined up behind us to get in on the action.

It was a great meal.